


Skater in the Snow

by Odamaki



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 1980's, Boarding School, Canon-Typical Violence, Christmas, Gen, Magic, Mysterious Sherlock, Orphans, Parental Mrs. Hudson, References to Drugs, Teen John, Teen Sherlock, Wholesome Christmas fun, alternative universe, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 17:57:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 33,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13105530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odamaki/pseuds/Odamaki
Summary: Invited to stay at the house of a godmother he didn't know he had, John accepts, not knowing what to expect. Christmas is coming, the house is old, and as the snow starts to thicken, the ghosts begin to emerge.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This has been written as part of the [ Holmsian Holidays ](https://holmesianholidays.tumblr.com) advent calendar for 2017 and will be posted in two parts, with the final half posted tomorrow, Christmas Eve at around 9AM GMT. :) Happy Christmas and have a great new year!  
> -Oda

**PART I**

“My godmother?”

John puts down the letter and looks into Stella’s anxious, smiling face. She’s twisting the old turquoise ring around her finger, like she can twist away the knot in his stomach.

All the words that John can think to say further on the matter are angry.

“Well, where’s she been all these years?”

Ted, bearlike, sighs and reaches a hand across the table. “She’s been in America, lad, Florida, for the last twelve years. She moved back a few months ago and the first thing she did was to try to find your mum. She didn’t know.”

“She’s nice, John,” Stella says, “She’d like to meet you. She could come here, just for tea or something.”

“Would Harry come home from uni?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Ted answers. “We spoke to her last night and with exams right after the Christmas holidays, she’s like as not to stay up in Leeds to study. We said we’d try and organise a phone call.”

“Mrs. Hudson is your godmother, really,” Stella adds. She means, ‘just yours’. In which case John thinks, it’s the first thing in his life in years that’s been wholly his own.

“Is that her name?”

“Yes.”

“Do I have a godfather too?”

“No, she moved back here when her husband died. It might be nice if you don’t ask her too many questions about that.”

John is generally good at not asking prying questions and minding his own business. He hasn’t mentioned the fact that Harry will like as not stay up in Leeds to get drunk with her friends at house parties, for example.

“How about Thursday?” Stella is saying. “No time like the present.” She tinkles out a little laugh, giving the riotous clutter of the kitchen a rueful look. “It’s as good as any other day around here.”

____

Thursday turns out to be worse than a regular day. John wakes in the early hours, knotted up with anticipation over meeting this strange new relative, to the creak and whisper of Stella and Ted moving around and a car at the door.

Another new arrival.

Last time it had been a little girl in a dirty nappy, riddled with lice. The time before that it had been a lolling, teenage boy two years younger and two-inches taller than John, called Douglas. Douglas still wheezed in his sleep not more than three feet from John’s bed.

John wonders who it could be this time. There have been a lot, over the years. Stella and Ted always take what comes to their door; the more unwanted the child, the more welcome. Harry had strived to make herself as unwelcome to everywhere else as she could, and for her sake, John thinks, they’d kept him too.

John hopes it’s someone like Douglas. Someone easy-going.

Before he’s even followed that tired thought to the end, down along the corridor someone begins to cry; a harsh, jagged noise.

John rolls his face into the pillow, and dreams troubled visions of Florida until breakfast.

____

Mrs. Hudson arrives with a social worker, and is not at all what John expected. She is a tiny, bird-like woman, without a trace of an American accent. She brings him a box of toffees and a fluttering care. ‘She knew my mother,’ John thinks with a thump. ‘But she’s so old.’

“Oh, we were neighbours when I was in London,” Mrs. Hudson says, pouring tea for them both. They’re crammed in the back corner of the playroom, the door open but drawn back towards the hall enough to give them a semblance of privacy. The social worker has over-lapped with the one who has come about the new child. It must be crowded in the kitchen.

One of the babies, Polly, crawls in her playpen, Stella dipping in and out. The new child is a boy, John has learned, who has smashed a chair already and bruised Ted’s shins. The house has been periodically shattered by shouts and swearing all morning.

“You were such a tiny thing,” Mrs. Hudson adds, looking at the wan teenage boy across from her. His wrists poke out from his sweater as he reaches over for the cup.

“I used to babysit you sometimes. And you see, I still feel like I know you, just a little.” Her face crinkles into a smile as she holds up a finger and thumb scarcely separated. “Just a bit.” The smile winces away as the roar in the kitchen grows again.

“Busy around here,” she comments.

“It’s always like this,” John says, without meaning to sound so bitter.

“I’m not used to it any more, all this city living. We were rather out of the way in Florida, you see, and I’m not sure I’m fit for it now.” She puts down her cup and whispers conspiratorially. “I’ve bought a house.”

“Oh?”

“Well, it was mine, I mean I lived there, oh years and years ago now, but it’s a lovely building. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it up for sale - here, I’ll show you.”

Before John can feign polite interest, she fetches out of her handbag a photograph. The image is grainy, but at least in colour, and shows an old butter-coloured stone building set above a lawn. There’s a scatter of flowers around the entrance and a swing dangling from one of the trees.

“It looks nice,” he says, and there’s a strange lump in his throat. He curls his feet back under his chair, disturbing a dropped Lego there. He hadn’t known Mrs. Hudson was rich. “It’s big.”

“It was a school once, and it’s a bit big for me,” she agrees, “And the cellar is awfully damp, but I couldn’t say no. Do you like it?”

The question disarms John. “Yes,” he says, startled into raw honesty. “It looks… really nice.”

“I’m glad,” she says, and she’s smiling again, not because she has to in order to make him feel better or to be polite, she’s smiling for him. John has always known the difference “I don’t know if you’d want to humour a silly old bat like me, John, but I thought, if you want to, it would be lovely to have you.”

“Have me?”

“For Christmas,” she says, radiant. “Oh, please come, we could have such fun! You could help me get a proper tree- oh, a real Christmas tree! I’ve not had one in years and years; and there’s a town and you could borrow a bicycle if you wanted to get out and about. Would you?”

Polly clinks and clunks at a toy in the silence behind them. John grips his mug. Out in the kitchen, the roar has subsided to a bustle of pots and pans and adults talking. Douglas talking. Soon he’s going to come in and ask if John wants to play with Lego, like he always does and John will say ‘yes’ like he always does, and suddenly his whole life feels too small, and the rest of the world too big.

This house is really all John knows.

It’s not that he hates it.

It’s just that it’s not his.

‘Wouldn’t it be strange?’ he asks himself, ‘An old lady and me, alone in a house together?’

The photo on the table shows window after window along the front of the house. There must be so much space inside.

It must be so quiet there.

“There’s a nice boy living next door,” Mrs. Hudson offers, “He’s about your age, so you wouldn’t be completely cut off from the world.”

“Yes,” John says with relief. “Yes, then. I’ll come.”

“Oh, John,” Mrs. Hudson wells over with a happiness so tangible it makes John’s heart beat suddenly harder. When he reaches out to return the photograph, she pats his hand and says on the spur of the moment, “Keep it.”

John takes his peculiar gift and slips it into his shirt pocket. It warms against his skin, but remains there, indelible, for the rest of the day.  
______  
______

**PART II**

The train takes him south to a platform overhung by an old-fashioned station.

John steps out into a gust of sharp, fresh air that is dusted with filth from the train, but still so much better than London.

It’s already a different world. The pigeons here are fat and indolent, waddling contentedly around under the feet of the passengers, and the lacy woodwork of the station roof hangs whitely down like trimming on a Christmas cake. John feels a thrill of genuine excitement.

Something new. At last!

There are not many passengers disembarking at this tiny end of the branch line, and John can’t see Mrs. Hudson anywhere. Daunted, he steps out onto the back road where a few cars are waiting, and then a piercing whistle attracts his attention.

The boy, perhaps a couple of years older than himself, waves at him.

“John?” he yells across the road.

He has a face that reminds John of a Labrador- brown eyes and an unassuming expression, verging on the edge of hopeful, and a grin that seems to sprawl across his mouth like it’s second nature to it.

“Mrs. Hudson sent me to collect, with her apologies. It got cold last night and her car wouldn’t start. Is that all you’ve got with you?”

John lifts the single duffle bag he’s carrying slightly. “Yeah.”

“Just as well; here, we can tie it on the back.”

The boy swings his leg over the frame of the bicycle he’s straddling and unhitches a pair of hooks on elastic. “Thought I wasn’t going to be here in time,” he carries on, conversationally, showing John a second bicycle tucked into the hedge behind the first. “Because I had to shoot down here on yours and then go back for mine, and Mike couldn’t find the keys for the lock, the daft bugger. It’s Mike’s bike,” he adds over his shoulder. “He’s done his knee in playing rugby, so he said take it, as long as you don’t bust it or lose it. Better than my old one anyway; its brakes aren’t working. There we go.”

In a moment, he’s relieved John of his bag and secured it to the back of the bicycle. He pats the saddle and grins again.

“That alright?”

“It’s fine,” John says. “Er… I didn’t catch your name.”

“It’s Greg. Sorry, always forget that. And it’s John, right?”

“John Watson.”

“Greg Lestrade,” the boy says again, pushing the bike towards him. “John, Mike Stamford’s bike. No name.”

John grins. “That’ll do.”

“I brought my kit if the saddle’s too low or anything,” Greg says, watching John get on and giving the resulting ensemble a once over. “I reckon you’re about the same height as Mike though.”

“Yeah, it feels fine. How far is it?”

“Not far.” Greg swings himself back onto his own bike, leaning forward over the ram’s horn handles. “Just watch how you go by the edge of the roads. It’s icy.”

“That’s a racing bike, isn’t it? Do you race?”

“Sometimes,” Greg turns his head to speak over his shoulder, confidently following the road ahead. “I like touring more. Took her all the way down to Cornwall last year.”

The road turns a sharp corner and inclines. With this the conversation lapses into silent puffing. John follows the wriggling seat of Greg’s jeans up the hill, where they break out into a sudden view of the country with a river, marked only by the line of bare trees, and undulating fields. The edges of the road where the sun has yet to creep are white with frost, and John’s breath huffs white out ahead of him, kissing back across his cheeks, which tingle with the cold.

“It’s…going…to…snow,” Greg pants, rising in his seat to push up the last lip of the hill. He pauses at the top, leaning on the handlebars, and flashes his teeth again. He’s got a comma of dark brown hair hanging low on his forehead that John wants to flick out of his eyes.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Greg swallows to catch his breath and points. “See those low yellow clouds. That’s definitely snow coming.”

“It’s cold enough,” John says, rasping his pink knuckles down his front and flexing his fingers.

“Ain’t it? Let’s get back. Downhill now, watch out for ice!”

They shoot the few hundred metres across the brow of the hill, the little town disappearing behind them as they go, and then with a whoop, Greg sticks both legs out from the pedals and vanishes at a gut-lurching speed round a corner.

John follows, fist loose over the brakes.

They shoot like bobsleighs down the tunnel of the lane, overarched with trees. Greg weaves, knowing every run of grit like the back of his hand. John follows, bouncing on the thicker wheels of Mike’s mountain bike, and when Greg whoops again, John yells too.

The end of the lane gleams in a burst of pale light and then all at once they are zooming free of the trees, onto a hedge-less road before a lawn that rises to the buttery face of the house.

Greg tips his head back and laughs. “How was that?”

“Brilliant!”

“Bugger of a slope to cycle up, mind you. I usually go the long way by the road. Come on, she’ll have the tea on by now.”

John stares up at the house and it’s gleaming windows. It’s both smaller and bigger than he’d imagined. He can’t tell when it was built, just that it has the flat-fronted look of very old houses, and a presence about it suggestive of the previous hierarchy.

The door; however, is low and little, and the main sprawl of the house lies around the back in its outbuildings. They leave the bicycles in the empty stalls of the old stable, busy with rats, and tread on frozen feet towards the back door. John gets the impression that for all its grandeur, this is really a back-door kind of house.

“Where do you live?” John asks.

“Other side of the carp pond.” Greg points like a flagpole to somewhere over the roof of the stables. “We’ve got a farm.”

“So I’ll see you around,” John realises.

“Sure. We can go and see Mike too. He’ll like that. He’s got a computer,” Greg adds. He pushes open the door into a blast of warmth that immediately sets John’s nose running.

“Only us,” Greg yells, and the sound of the words warms John more than the heat of the kitchen.

“Yoo-hoo!” Mrs Hudson calls back.

They trample in, shutting the door with a bang and forgetting to wipe their feet, John’s duffle bag rebounding off of the doorframe.

“Hullo, Mrs. Hudson, I found him. Cor! That smells good, what is it?”

“I’ve put some gammon in the pan; it’s so cold out. John! Oh, you made it in one piece? Let me look at you- it’s so good to see you!”

She gathers him up into a squeeze that makes John turn shy. “Yes, thanks,” he says, “We cycled.”

“So I heard! Whooping down the lane,” she chuckles to herself. “How’s the bike?”

“Wonderful!”

“Good one, isn’t she?” Greg pips in, pleased with himself. “Is that a trifle, Mrs. Hudson?”

“Hands off,” she warns him. “Or wash them first please.”

John is absorbed into the bustle of the late afternoon. Although he knows Mrs. Hudson has no children now, he wonders if she ever did. Even though she must only recently have moved here – no more than a month or two at most- she treats Greg as easily as her own family and, with easy assimilation, John too. It is impossible to be awkward, even though he is naturally inclined to be reticent.

They crowd the large table, just the three of them over the steaming plates. The teapot broods like the comfortable hen that laid the brown eggs they crack open with spoons. The fat of the gammon has gone to toffee at the edges, scooped onto wedges of white bread and butter, dunked in the yolk, used to chase the peas around the plate. John is in heaven. Even the vegetables taste sweeter than usual.

They shove the plates onto the counter tops in a stack and spoon out slurping mounds of trifle, sticky with jelly and custard, while Greg and Mrs. Hudson dance along the repartee between them. John learns much about bicycles and how to cycle at speed, the nature of the town and the missing parties usually included, including one Sally Donovan who last summer pushed Greg in the carp pond and has yet to let him live it down.

“She’s gone away for Christmas though,” Greg says, with regret, and then lest John think he’s soft on her adds, “She’s actually alright really, for a girl. Better than Mike at football.”

Mrs. Hudson chuckles, refills the saucepan for hot chocolate and busies them into the washing up.

“Blimey, it’s snowing!” Greg says suddenly, dishcloth in hand.

John looks up. The window has gone a dark blue with the onset of nightfall, and Greg’s right. An apologetic dusting of white is sieving down from on high.

“Only a bit.”

“I said it would though, didn’t I?”

“You’d best be off, Greg, in case it gets thicker.”

Greg dumps the dishcloth into the water, hustling for his coat. “Thanks for tea, Mrs. Hudson! John, I’ll come round tomorrow afternoon – I can’t in the morning. But I’ll bring my sledge if there’s enough snow. Bye, Mrs. Hudson! Bye!”

He clatters off in a gust of cold air and the kitchen settles.

“Always busy, that boy,” Mrs. Hudson says. “Let’s tuck up in the living room. Do you play cards, John?”

“Yeah. Well, I can play some.”

“I’ll teach you poker,” Mrs. Hudson promises, “You bring the tray up for me.”

They clamber up a flight of stairs to the back living room, where there’s a peek of the kitchen garden, dusted already with thin snow, and fat armchairs. John wriggles into one, pulling his feet up under the cushions.

“There,” Mrs. Hudson says, satisfied. “Stir up that fire, John, and I’ll show you the rules for Blackjack.”

_____

“The house seems really old,” John comments, several rounds into losing catastrophically to Mrs. Hudson’s wits at cards. He can’t figure out how she’s doing it. It’s as if she can read his mind.

“Mmm, much older than I am,” she agrees. “And I’m quite old myself.”

“You said it was a school?”

“Once,” Mrs. Hudson says, passing cards across the table. “A long, long time ago. A boys’ school.”

“What kind of boys?”

“Rich boys, mostly. Second sons and so on. St. Christopher’s, it was called.”

“Who was St. Christopher?”

“The traveller’s saint. He carried the Christ child across a flooding river. But it wasn’t a good school,” Mrs. Hudson adds, as John warms to the idea. “It was a strict place, run for money and convenience than any real love of schooling.”

“Oh. What happened to the boys?”

“Oh, they grew up,” Mrs. Hudson says, airily, “Some went into the priesthood, others joined the army. Some became clerks and things like that in merchant’s offices. Some just faded away.”

“I mean, when the school shut.” John asks, trying to stifle a yawn.

Mrs. Hudson lays another card flat. “They were taken away. There was an epidemic,” she says slowly, “Of something called diphtheria.”

“I know what that is,” John says, “At least, I think I’ve been vaccinated for it.”

“Those poor boys weren’t,” Mrs. Hudson says simply, and then startles as the clock chimes. “Goodness me, is that the time? You must be exhausted.” She folds the cards into a pile and gathers up their empty mugs.

“I’m ok,” John says, through another yawn. “I was enjoying it.”

“You’ll find, John, I have a terrible habit of losing my place in time.” Mrs. Hudson gives him a stern look, which has no depth to it whatsoever. “But you mustn’t let me. Now, high time we were both in bed, I think.”

John clambers the stairs, following her, his duffle bag a leaden weight on his shoulder. He can already feel the ache in his thighs from cycling up the hill.

“I’ve put you round at the back for the view,” she tells him, opening a door onto a neat bedroom, panelled all around in wood. “But I’m just the floor below, so you can just stamp if you need me. Is it ok?”

“It’s great,” John says. It’s the funniest little room he’s ever been in. The bed is built into the wall like the bunk on a ship, or a compartment of a train, and John can see where it was once mirrored in the space where a more modern wardrobe has been fitted.

“I’ll leave you to settle,” Mrs. Hudson says. “Goodnight, John.”

“Goodnight.”

Alone, John wriggles into his pyjamas. The snow has stopped, leaving just a cold sprinkling across the icy ground. From here he can see the hedge of the bottom of the lawn, and beyond it, the great dark oval of the carp pond, set round at intervals by trees that thicken to a small wood at one end. At the near corner, on this side of the hedge, stands a single lamppost to mark the curve of the drive, like something out of Narnia.

And beyond that, fields and the ship-like lights of Greg’s farm house. John wonders if he flicks the lights on and off, Greg will see it. John rubs at his face and lifts the corner of the blankets, about to crawl in when something makes him stop.

Someone is walking along the edge of the pond. Not on the near side, but on the far side.

John presses his nose to the glass but he cannot make out their shape, just the lonely figure of a slim man, treading slowly along the bank. Something white dangles from either side of his shoulder, and it takes John a moment to recognise the shapes as ice skates. Even as John watches, the figure moves out of sight into the shadow of the trees, and vanishes.

______  
______

**PART III**

John wakes, knowing the world has changed. The light behind the curtains is too bright, too white - simply too clean for it to be an ordinary day. He rolls across the pillow and, squinting, lifts the edge of the curtains to look out.

The sky is blue as forget-me-nots, and the windowpanes painted with ferns of ice. John scratches the sand from his eyes and struggles further up onto the windowsill.

“Oh!”

Gone are the road, the drive and the lawn. Gone is the black space of the carp pond. The hedges are shrunken between sandwiches of billowy white and the ground blends into the horizon so that the world seems twice as large as it did when he went to bed.

John scrambles out from between the sheets, toes curling on the cold floor, heart thudding. It doesn’t look real; it’s too beautiful to be real. He drags his clothes from the chair where he left them the night before and hurries into them, taking the stairs down at a run.

The back door key is hung on a hook and it rattles in John’s hand as he struggles to turn it in the frozen lock and then he has flung the door open and is facing-

\- Snow!

Everywhere - innocent of the tread of human feet, only the picture writing of the little birds that have danced across it at dawn, and there on the wall by the stables, the delicate paw prints of a cat.

John stands, open-mouthed, dazzled by it. He’s never seen anything like it. Not before Christmas. Not as perfect as this.

A dash of red bounces low across the yard and alights on the ice-choked gutter of the stables. The robin bobs a bow and then, puffed out against the cold, pours out a rippling song full of confidence.

“Ooh, listen to old cock robin singing for his breakfast,” Mrs. Hudson says behind him. “He’ll be after the bacon fat.”

“Mrs. Hudson!”

She shuffles past him, bundled up in a dressing gown. “Put these out for him and then you choose if you’re going to be in or out; it’s cold with the door open.”

“Sorry!” He puts the door to and takes the handful of last night’s gammon rind from Mrs. Hudson’s odds and ends bin, carting it carefully out into the yard and setting it on the end of the wall.

The robin watches him with a bright eye until John is nearly back to the door, and then launches down on the rind with a scold. John hastens back in, watching through the window.

“Breakfast?” Mrs. Hudson offers. She already has the kettle clicking and spitting on the stove. “Or later? Or both?”

“What’s both?”

“Toast now, cooked breakfast later.”

“Both,” John says, “I’d like to go out.”

“Do as you please,” Mrs. Hudson says, passing him the bread knife and a fat white cob. “Though mind the pond. The ice may not be too thick.”

“I’ll be careful.”

John carves out an absolute doorstop of bread and slathers it with the butter and honey Mrs. Hudson slides across the counter. Her eyes twinkle with amusement, and John feels it; if she were young again, she’d be doing the same as him, only perhaps wildly without even the bread.

“One hour,” she warns, “and then I’m putting the breakfast on. You’ll hear the church bell chime.”

“Alright,” John says, wriggling into his coat around the honey. He licks the crust to catch the drips and then scurries outside. Mrs. Hudson waves him off through the window, clicking her tongue and smiling to herself.

The robin takes off dangling bacon fat, away over the stables. John crunches across the yard. The snow is really only a few inches for the most part, but he can see where the wind has blown it into the corners that it’s deeper in places.

He marches out to look at the lawn, trailing a finger through the snow on the wall, in and around the paw prints. The slope of ground down to the pond is too much to resist. John eyes it, wolfing down his bread and with the last bite, lets himself go with a muffled howl of exaltation.

The world tips and rolls as he tumbles down in the snow, shoulder over shoulder, with his vision flashing blue and white and white and blue and cold and perfect. The last of the honey melts on his tongue, and the snow powders his lips.

He comes to a halt at the bottom, dizzy and laughing, covered in snow. He shakes as he lurches back to his feet and admires the crazy green passage of his descent.

“Yes!” He cries, punching the sky. “Yes! God! Champion snow roller!”

He laughs until his isolation recollects the silence, and the quietness of winter’s day companionably reinstates itself. He’s a guest here, after all. Curious, he turns his attention to the carp pond.

Mrs. Hudson is right. The pond is freezing, but only in patches. Thin shelves of the stuff float around the edges, and in the very middle, he can see a transparent island forming, twisting on the surface of the water.

There is no path around the pond. The lawn just expires into the water, where the stately pines haven’t first interrupted it. John weaves amongst them, filling his pockets with cones as a matter of duty.

The curve of water takes him east away from the front of the house and the lane, the trees thickening to a little dell at the very far end. John crunches over the frozen leaves and stops when he comes a stone's throw from a run down shed.

Someone has been there.

John approaches it. The person must have left at the tail end of the snowfall because their footsteps are still visible in the snow, just no longer crisp in their outline.

The shed shows no obvious sign of forced entry and in fact, when John opens the little door, there is nothing in it at all except a stack of logs.

‘It was a woman,’ John thinks with surprise. ‘She must have washed in perfume…’

The smell lingers in the air, undeniable; a peculiar floral smell that is neither disagreeable nor identifiable on any level other than flowery. John has not spent much time in gardens and even less time sniffing flowers.

But he likes it anyway.

There is no other clue to whoever came there, not even dust.

He closes the door and follows the imprints in the snow out of the dell where unexpectedly he discovers a yew hedge.

The hedge has broken the line of snow, and it is even a little warmer at its side, although chilly where they throw a hard shadow down towards the lawn. John follows the marching footprints beside the trees, which are boxed so closely together, and rear so far above John’s head that they make a formidable wall.

Presently, however, he comes to a place in the hedge where a statue once stood, interrupting the wall of green. There is nothing left of the figure now, just the square mass of its plinth, the corners carved into twists like rope.

John brushes the snow from the top and heaves himself up to kneel on the gritty stonework. Standing, he looks out over a garden, run down for the winter. The house is offset in the distance, over another stretch of hedge.

The snow in the garden is thinner, held off by the yew hedge. John leans out to examine the ground. There is gravel poking out from under the snow, and the scattered darts of more birds, but there are no footprints.

He drops down into the garden and drifts along the paths, searching for another sign, but there’s nothing. Perhaps the wind has erased them.

John is faintly disappointed, but only for a moment before he hears the soft boom of the church bell beyond the hill.

It makes John aware all at once that his bare hands are cold and red and his feet going stiff inside his trainers. The memory of the kitchen last night is a sudden hard lure compared to the bleakness of the empty garden and John turns towards it willingly.  
_____

Mrs. Hudson is up and busy when he comes in shivering.

“Right on time,” she says, as glad to see him as he was to see her. “Been exploring?”

“Mm. Down by the pond and then into the garden.”

“Over St. Christopher’s Bottom?”

John bursts out in a sudden boyish laugh, scandalised to hear something like that from someone as prim as Mrs. Hudson.

“Over the stone block.”

“That’s it,” she laughs. “Poor old Chris. He never got to stand there, you know?”

“Why not?” John asks.

“The school bought the base on the agreement that the patrons of the school would supply the statue from a copy of one in… oh, I can’t remember where. Somewhere in Europe.” She pauses to take a dish of sausages out of the fridge. “But the money was slow in coming so the copy was a cheap one, and it broke on the way to England. They set the broken torso up in the chapel instead, with the baby Jesus in his arm.”

“Is it still there?” John asks, decanting pinecones into the kindling basket.

“Yes, you’ll see it if you like. I usually attend Midnight Mass. Oh good, the kettle’s boiled.”

Mrs. Hudson shuffles around the table fetching breakfast, her skinny ankles poking out below her dress. When she moves to lift the heavy frying pan off the wall, John jumps in.

“Let me. I do loads of cooking at home.”

“You're a good boy. If you're sure?”

“Nothing to it.”

She gently puffs down onto a chair. John tips the sausages out of their paper and cranks the heat up under the pan.

“It is cold today. Does my hip in. Can you manage that, dear?”

“Yes,” John grunts around his fingers. He's caught them on the edge of the pan. ‘Can you?’ he wonders. It's an awfully large house for one old lady. It has him thinking.

“There must have been staff here back then. When it was a school, I mean. Servants and so on.”

“Mmm, lots. About thirty.”

“Thirty!”

“They came up from the village. Boys and girls and men, every morning.”

“Bet that was hard,” John says, remembering the hill.

“For someone your age, certainly. You'd be a Jack of all jobs, or a gardener’s boy. Up at dawn and home late, and you'd have to answer to the pupils, mind. Even boys younger than you.”

“Why?”

“They were a better class than us; simply that. And you weren’t to be seen if you could avoid it. But then, if a boy found you and said jump to fetch him something- ooh-hoo! You had best jump!”

“I'd jump a knuckle into his nose first.”

“And never work again,” Mrs Hudson retorted. “But you're right; the village boys didn't take to it much. There were feuds like you wouldn't imagine. And not all the schoolboys were bad. They could only give orders within reason.”

“You make it sound like it was only yesterday,” John says, grinning. “Did your family go to the school? I dunno, your dad or something?”

“Oh, I just ended up around here when I was a girl,” Mrs Hudson says, getting up. “Mustn't mind me twittering on. I'm a very backwards-looking old biddy. Except for cars. How are those sausages browning?”

She prods in the pan with a fork and nods. “Coming up nicely.”

“Cars?” John asks, distracted.

“Yes, I rather wanted to treat you to a spin into town, but this cold snap means that's going to have to wait. Toast with these or have you had enough bread today? I expect there's a couple of tomatoes in the fridge as well.”

John opts for more of everything, which includes an egg.

“I’m enjoying this,” he says, once the last lick of sausage has been cleared from his plate.

“You looked as though you were.”

“Mrs. Hudson?”

“Yes?”

“Does anyone else live around here?”

“Only the Lestrades,” she replies.

“Only I thought I saw someone around the pond last night. And there was footsteps around that old shed down there.”

“Perhaps it was Greg’s father. This kind of cold brings the foxes in, and they’re a terror for hens. Right,” she concludes, business-like. John wonders about the smell of flowers, but Mrs. Hudson ask him another question before he can follow the thought too far.

“Are you going out again? Or stopping in until Greg calls by?”

“Stopping in,” John says. “Well, I might go out in the yard. Not far. Maybe just explore the lane.”

“I was going to put a batch of mince pies on.”

“Stopping in, then,” John says, at once. “Can I help?”

Mrs. Hudson laughs and adjusts her glasses. “You know, I was rather hoping you’d ask me that.”

_____  
_____

**PART IV**

John passes the rest of the morning cutting rounds of pastry and passing them through Mrs. Hudson’s deft hands. By the time Greg barrels through the door, long after lunch, they’ve got a rack of little golden pies on the table, and Mrs. Hudson pushes two each into their hands before they clatter out of the door again.

“Got my sledge,” Greg says, juggling the hot pie. “Can’t believe how much it snowed!”

They take it out up to the lawn and careen down the slope over and over, until the grass is slicked to ice and they are bruised and happy.

“I reckon it’ll freeze again tonight,” Greg says, panting as they tug the sledge up to the top of the slope again.

“Think the pond’ll freeze?”

“Maybe not enough to walk on,” Greg says. The wind is picking up again, playing with the snow and even though the sun is out, it’s growing increasingly cold. “But it might go solid. It takes ages to go thick enough to go on.”

“That’ll be past Christmas then,” John says. It’s just a week away now. He’d almost forgotten Christmas was coming, what with one thing and another. “and I’m leaving on the 6th.”

Dusk falls and John comes back into the house, sodden all over, tired but happy. He wriggles out of his jacket and trainers. Mrs. Hudson stuffs the soggy toes of them with newspaper and leaves them to steam on top of the kitchen radiator.

“You need some proper boots for this weather,” Mrs. Hudson tuts. “These won’t do.”

“Sorry,” John mumbles. “Don’t get so much snow in Chelmsford.”

“Oh, I’m not cross, darling,” Mrs. Hudson says, fluttering at the very idea. “Who could’ve predicted the weather would turn like this; not even the man on the television, that’s who. I have something for you.”

“For me?” John is startled by the idea.

“For you.” Mrs. Hudson has her hands hidden in the pockets of her apron with a twinkling smile. “Ta-dah!” she pulls them out, full of deep navy blue wool, striped with grey. “Do you like them? Is the colour all right? I wasn’t sure what you’d like.”

John takes them, pulling the gloves onto his hands. The fit is a little loose, but he loves the stripes and says so. “When did you get them?”

“Get them, you silly boy?” Mrs. Hudson laughs. “I made them.”

“You made them!? When?”

“While you weren’t looking! Do you like them?”

“They’re brilliant,” John says, impressed and touched. The soft wool squishes against his palms when he balls his fingers up. “They’re really nice. Thank you,” he adds.

“We’ll go into town tomorrow, one way or another. I’m sure Mr. Lestrade will give us a lift if there’s no thaw. I don’t think there will be.”

“Greg says he thinks it’ll freeze and the pond might go solid.”

“I expect he’s right; he’s got the land in his bones, has that one. You’ll have to come back in the summer,” she adds. “He’s a devil for finding things.”

“Like what?”

“Things he likes. Owl’s nests and fishing holes, poacher’s traps and abandoned orchards. They were always rather the same like that…”

“Who was?” John asks. He is puzzled by Mrs. Hudson’s expression, like she’s looking back to some far away day, and the impression it gives him is troubling.

“I’m just wittering again; witter, witter.”

John doesn’t press her to explain; it would seem too rude after all her kindnesses, and perhaps she is just old and lonely and a bit odd. She probably can’t help it. Stella said something about Mr. Hudson, whoever he was, and whatever happened, he’s definitely dead. If he is the person Mrs. Hudson is thinking of, then John knows he shouldn’t pry. “What are we having for dinner?” he asks, instead, and tries to forget about it.  
_____

At night, the electricity goes out, abruptly and leaving them both startled in the middle of the washing up the supper things.

“Well, that’s that!” Mrs. Hudson says, exasperated, pulling off her washing-up gloves. John fetches candles from the pantry and lights them from the living room fireplace. The house seems bigger and older by candlelight but Mrs. Hudson seems to take to it like it’s second nature.

“It was all like this in my girlhood,” she says, shooing John away from trying to help her. “No, I’m fine, thank you dear. I know this house.”

John is worn out and bruised from a day of throwing himself down hillsides in the snow, but the thrill of the house in darkness keeps him awake long after Mrs. Hudson has sent them both to bed. He plays with the dribbling wax from the candle and then it occurs to him to get up and explore.

Mrs. Hudson’s room is directly below him, but provided he’s quiet, he thinks he can slip around and peek at some of the other rooms.  
Bundled up in his dressing gown, John slips out of his room onto the landing, and creeps up and down for no purpose other than to enjoy the adventure of it. He wishes Greg were there, or at least someone. One of the boys from the school, even, though the ghostly prerequisite of that kind of friend makes him change his mind about that pretty quickly.

Then again, when he thinks about it, John can’t name anyone he can imagine sharing this kind of thing with. There are boys at his own school that he gets on with, but there’s an overhanging awareness that he’s different, that he comes from the house with all the troubled or disabled kids, and that his sister has a bad reputation. Somehow too, it’s like half of them have changed recently. There’s so much fuss about girls it’s exhausting.

Maybe Douglas, who likes girls and boys alike but only inasmuch as he just wants to be friends with the whole wide world and play with Lego. John imagines inviting him along, and then disappointingly remembers that Douglas is scared of the dark and would cry.

And then Stella would tell him off for not looking after Douglas better.

Better alone, then, as always.

The bathroom is lit by the moon from outside and is as white and stark as an iceberg. John slides up and down on his socks on the tiles, casting spooky shadows around the shower curtain with his candle.

The room next to his is precisely the same as his own; in fact, they all are the same up and down the landing. It strikes John how little the school must have been. In his own school in Chelmsford, there must be about half a thousand boys and girls, all crowded on top of one another, but here?

John quickly calculates. If it’s two to a room, and there are two floors of about ten rooms each, then there couldn’t have been fifty students in the whole school. The rest, John knows, is staff and servants quarters. Where did they eat? Where did they learn?

The more John thinks about it, the less he can figure it out. Maybe the whole building has been chopped and changed over time.

The Master’s room at the end of the corridor is locked, so he enters the room beside it instead. This too is identical to his room, except the second bed has been left built into the wall, sadly stuffed with junk. John socks stir up the dust on the floor and he wishes he’d thought to put his slippers on. It hadn’t seemed relevant when getting out of bed.

The bedstead is thick old oak, and sitting on the edge of the empty frame, he finds the remembrances of boys long gone in the graffiti that they left. One forgotten artist has inked the knots into the familiar shapes of a dog, a boat, and a turd. John grins, holding the candle up.

There are enterprising works done with penknives as well, where the mattress would have hidden them. John traces a line of initials. SM, VA, JM. He wishes he knew who they were.

He stands to look out of the window, now at the other end of the same side of the house, and finds he can peek down into the yew hedge garden. It’s neater than he’d realised, all set around a fountain in the middle, with the flowerbeds set in knots all around. From here the angle is wrong to be able to see the old pond, and the copse between the two obscures everything beyond the hedge into shadow anyway.

He can see St Christopher’s Bottom, though, sitting like a sugar cube in the middle of the hedge.

And something else.

John leans further over the windowsill. The shape is moving swiftly, hunched over along the gangway into the garden, and then straightens once it reaches the fountain.

It’s him again.

Closer this time, John can make out more of the detail with him. He is tall, and thin, wrapped up in a big dark coat. His chest has an oddly bulky look, and then John remembers the skates. He must have them tucked into the front of his coat so that the white doesn’t show.

Clever.

John hitches a leg up onto the windowsill, now almost sitting in it, so that he can see.

Come to it, he reasons, the man might not be a man at all, but a boy just tall for his age. He moves like a child, though if pressed John wouldn’t have been able to explain what he meant by the assumption. At any rate, there’s an elastic quality to the way the stranger moves, and a sense of purpose that is illogical to any adult eye, but which John can make sense of.

Like the way he tips his head back to catch the snow on his face.

The boy is a sensualist.

He traverses the garden up to St. Christopher’s Bottom, clambering up, and there stops, squatting on the stone and looking out. The air is sharp and cold out there; John can feel it through the draught around the windowpanes. The other boy shifts his feet, lifts his weight onto the balls of his toes and down again.

John expects him to drop down off the marble and vanish, but instead he appears to sigh deeply and turn back. He makes no move to return the way he came, instead making vague passes from side to side of the space he occupies, turning on the spot.

He is dancing.

“Huh,” John says, riveted to the sight.

Unaware of being watched, the boy moves free of self-consciousness. He turns on his heel and then on his toe, leg pointed outwards. He jumps to switch to the other leg and turns again, holding onto the skates beneath his coat, or else holding his own lapels in an assumed confidence. Along the gravel he goes with a hop-two-three-hop, swap-two-three-hop, until John has quite caught the lazy rhythm of it himself and is stood, clumsily tapping one foot in the dust.

‘Go on,’ he thinks, and as if he can hear him, the boy does.

He thrusts his hands into the coat and wrestles free the skates, placing them onto the top of the plinth and then throwing his arms into a spin that sends him whirling like an angry top down the path.

A scuff of a shoe flings up a spray of snow, and the movements are warlike surges as if he were skating anyway and had something to prove.

With a final rush, he lunges and leaps up onto St. Christopher’s Bottom and there stops, completing the image of the statue, chin lifted towards the frozen sky, and the house.

Even at this distance, John sees his mouth fall open.

The candle!

Burnt down to a stub, it still throws light up onto John’s face, and the boy must see him. He stops dead, and then sways before dropping suddenly to the floor, skates snatched up and fleeing down the garden. John lurches forward to see where he goes-

-but the boy passes into the shadow of the house and vanishes.

He’s gone.

John sinks back from the window, suddenly conscious of how alone he is. The candle is guttering and he is forced to blow it out before it floods wax over his fingers, and goes to bed in the dark.

_____  
_____

**Part V**

John wakes late, feeling so groggy and cold the following morning that Mrs. Hudson has to knock on his door to rouse him at all.

“Aren’t you up?” she calls.

John curls further into the pillow and grunts. “Mmm.” He has suffered from strange, restless dreams the whole night through, of dancing and snowmen and falling through ice.

He pushes his head out from under the duvet, and then winces back again. It’s freezing in his room.

“Breakfast downstairs in ten, or none,” Mrs. Hudson warns him and he hears her creak away down the landing.

It’s a wretch to leave the warmth of the bed, and John wouldn’t at all except he has a pressing need to pee, and then the slapping chill of the bathroom leaves him rudely awake.

Downstairs, it is much warmer. The snow is still there, crunchy on the surface and doubly disturbed from two mornings worth of animal and human traffic. John is so late down in the end that Mrs. Hudson simply puts a sandwich in his hand and steers him, yawning, towards the road.

They have to take the long way round to the town, around the hills. Mrs. Hudson grinds the gears on Mr. Lestrade’s old farm truck, which smells of wet dog and hay amongst other more organic odours.

“Still, useful,” Mrs. Hudson mutters to herself, patting the flatbed’s steering wheel.

The town, when they arrive, is in the full swing of market, and even John is awake enough to start to take an interest. He follows Mrs. Hudson around the shops and stalls, where it seems she already knows everyone and everything, and keeps his thoughts occupied by a constant barrage of information.

John slides along on the icy cobbles after her, weighed down by parcels, half listening, and half thinking of the dancing skater. He is certain beyond all doubt, that it was not Mr. Lestrade. No one who dances like that could drive an old flatbed truck that smells of manure.

It’s just not possible.

“Here,” Mrs. Hudson says, breath steaming. She pushes a handful of coins into his hand and shoos him. “I have a few errands to run still. Why don’t you put those things in the car and I’ll meet you at the café in an hour? A pot of tea for me, and whatever you fancy. And let’s have teacakes.”

“Alright.” John pockets the change. There’s enough for tea plus a little over by the looks of it. John waves Mrs. Hudson off and makes a beeline for the sweet shop.

There is nothing he wants to buy in the market after that, so he follows the high street up the hill in the opposite direction, happily rattling a cola cube around his teeth. The standard set of shops gradually peters out, leaving just the stranger independent stores to lord over the top of the high street. John pauses outside of a model store, rummaging in his paper bag and contemplating the dangling fighter jets in the window.

He wonders if he has enough to buy one of the comics from the box propped by the door, but he doesn’t know exactly how much tea will cost and it would be embarrassing to come up short at the counter, so reluctantly he leaves it. John mooches off down a side street at random, which leads him abruptly and unexpectedly into a churchyard.

It’s one of the very old kind where people are no longer buried on a regular basis, so that all the tombstones are weathered and grown over with lichen and the names famously local but personally forgotten. The place feels doubly abandoned with the snow.

The path has been cleared but the grass between the stones is completely untouched, hiding all but the stand up gravestones, each giving off an air of ennui under its white beret.

The larger stones are the big block type, long as their occupant and high as a picnic table. John wanders alongside one, using a finger to push the snow out of the decorative grooves onto the floor.

“Can I help you?”

John startles, grasping his bag of sweets.

The verger’s age is impossible to tell. He’s one of those perpetually baby-faced men. John tucks his cola cube into his cheek and can’t help but look shiftless.

“The church is closed.”

“I was just looking.”

“Anything in particular?” The verger asks. He’s carrying a travelling case with an address label on it, the largest word on which John reads upside down. It says Dimmock. It’s either the name of the man or his description. “You’re not local.”

“I’m staying with Mrs. Hudson at the big house,” John says, and a little light bulb seems to go off over the man’s head.

“St. Christopher’s.”

“Yes.”

“Well, well,” Dimmock adds, sounding like he knows plenty about John’s business, but then John supposes it’s a big house and a small town; everyone must know everyone’s business. This doesn’t mean he has to like it, mind you. “How are you finding it? Any ghosts?”

Dimmock wriggles his fingers ghoulishly, trying to be a Relatable Adult. John stares back.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“Of course not. Still, they all died there, you know.”

“Yes,” John says, uncomfortably. Dimmock chuckles, apparently not even aware that it is at John’s expense. John’s had dealings with plenty of grown-ups like this before. They seem to think the way to get along with the youth is to do all the irritating things grown-ups did to them when they were young. John is always baffled as to how they can’t remember how obnoxious it is.

“They’re in the corner, if you want to see ‘em,” Dimmock concludes. “Six of ‘em, anyway.”

“What?”

“Back corner by the holly bush.” Dimmock jangles a set of keys out of his pocket, stepping towards the church door. “And if I catch you throwing snowballs, I’ll have you down to the fuzz as soon as whistle, you hear me?”

“Yes,” John says sullenly, and pulls a face as soon as Dimmock has turned his back.

“You’ll stick that way,” Dimmock warns, pushing the door open and John, caught out, hurries away.

Curious as he is about the school, he can’t say he really wants to see their graves. Nevertheless, he feels directed towards them and has a suspicion if he does anything else, Dimmock will pop out the church again, so he goes.

The holly bush throws a cold shadow over the stones, which must have once stood regimentally in line, but now the roots from the trees have disturbed them and they sag at angles like drunken bridesmaids.

John squats in front of them, brushing the snow from their faces. Each of them has the same date of death, though the ages are subtly different and the inscriptions give a hint of the varying quality of the family relationship.

_In Memory of Victor Armitage, son of James Armitage, departed this life January the 6th 1778 Aged 16 years._

_Here lies the body of Isa Witney, beloved son who died January 6 1778 in the 16th year of his life_

_In memory of Sebastian Moran who departed this life by sudden illness January 6th A.D. 1778 Anno ærat 15._

_Here lyeth the body of Willm Sherlock Scott Holmes of London Born January 6th 1762. Lost 1778._

_James Moriarty Died January the 6th 1778._

_Here lies the remains of Henry Baskerville, son of Sir Charles Baskerville Who died of the sore throat disease January the 6th 1778, Aged 12 years. He takes with him his name._

The one poor soul with nothing but a name and date is strikingly awful, but John feels most for the last one. The sense of grief reaches out across the vast space of time, made more touching by the starkness of its neighbour.

John crunches through the last of his cola cube and when he takes another from the bag, he leaves a third on the youngest grave before he leaves.

____

The café is steamed up all across the windows, and John has to keep wiping a space to peek through with his sleeve, checking for Mrs. Hudson on the street. She flurries in on a snap of air, red-cheeked and merry.

“John, hello! Did you have a good look around?”

“Yes, thanks.”

She pulls off her gloves and promptly singes her frozen fingers on the teapot, so John pours for them both. She’s brimming over with cheeriness. John’s glad of it. He bites the head off of a gingerbread man and doubles the butter on his teacake.

“I’ve got a surprise in the truck,” she says, bouncing in her seat.

“What is it?”

“A surprise!” she cries and teases him mercilessly, “Oh, I am excited. You’ll have to help me with it.”

“But what is it?” John pesters. She won’t tell him. After they leave the café, she herds him over to the truck and as they round it, she says “Ta-dah!” and waits for his reaction.

It’s a Christmas tree. Already potted, it’s the most Hans Christian Anderson perfect little Christmas tree John could have imagined. Mrs. Hudson claps her hands together, beaming from ear to ear. “Isn’t it exemplary?”

“It’s nice,” John agrees. On tiptoes, he peers into the bed of the truck. Not only is there the tree, there’re boxes and parcels done tightly up and stowed at the foot of the tree. She swats his hand as he reaches in to feel at them.

“What’s in them?”

“Secret plans and clever tricks. And my ornaments,” she adds, sounding very pleased. John grins. It’s hard not to find her enthusiasm catching. The boxes are heavy when he carries them into the house for her, and pretty as the tree is, they have a devil of a job getting it through the back door and up the stairs into the living room. Not willing to admit defeat; however, John refuses to let her telephone Mr. Lestrade for help, and he manages it in the end.

“There,” she says, once they’re done. “Doesn’t that look good?”

It’s not even decorated yet, but it does. John brings up the box with her ornaments in, and Mrs. Hudson brings him another surprise by filling the teapot with hot apple juice. Glass bells and silver bells, fairy lights and china ornaments. John sits cross-legged on the floor testing light bulbs, while the radio plays.

He enjoys it.

In Chelmsford, they have a tree, but only a little one and Stella usually does it all while they’re at school so there aren’t any arguments about it. They have ornaments but usually plastic because of the little ones and Douglas who likes to stand in front of it humming ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ and rearranging things when the mood strikes him. He’s very careful, but accidents happen, Stella says, so it has to be plastic. For the same reason, they can’t have chocolates on the tree. They tend to get gobbled too quickly. John himself has been a culprit of this.

He mentions this to Mrs. Hudson and she laughs. “Maybe later I’ll make some gingerbread for it.”

They stand back when they’re done to appraise their work. Mrs. Hudson gives him the 3-2-1 and John flicks the lights, and then runs out to see. It’s beautiful.

“John,” Mrs. Hudson says, warm with happiness, and to both their surprise she hugs him and it’s not at all awkward. “I’m so happy I have my tree.”

“Me too,” John says. He sits down on the sofa, and softens. “Me too.”

_____  
_____

**Part VI**

Night comes again, clear from horizon to horizon. With the lights all out in his room, John sits on the windowsill, bundled in the blankets, watching for the skater. The snow seems to hold the full weight of the darkness at bay, it’s so brilliantly white, but it’s dark nonetheless. With only the pinprick lights of the Lestrade Farm far across the pond, there’s nothing except the moon to light the garden after the lamppost switches off at midnight.

John’s never seen such stars.

He’s so lost in them that he’s nearly asleep when the little of him that is still awake notices the shadow moving below. He jerks awake, and watches. It’s the same boy, coming along by the yew hedge, a darker cut-out against the dim shapes of the tree, his face floating along in the shadows like a mask.

John slips from the windowsill into his trainers and creeps down the stairs. Hurrying into his coat and gloves, he opens the back door and steps out into the yard.

He’s shivering within moments. There’s a breeze tonight, which makes the air feel even colder, and his toes hurt at first and then go numb. He jogs to keep warm, climbing the gate to the yard and out onto the lawn.

There are footsteps in the snow and John follows them. The boy’s feet are bigger than his own, and he hides his own steps inside of their imprint. There’s no other sign of him, but the marks lead unerringly towards the pond.

They turn at its edge and John pauses. The pond is a single sheet of ice now. The freezing day and two nights of cold have done their work, but there’s no one skating on it. For good reason. John touches the ice with the toe of his shoe and it groans.

The trees ahead are densely dark, while the sky overhead blazes. John pauses at the border of snow and ice. There’s a light between the trees.

Shivering, John approaches the hut, suddenly apprehensive. Faintly on the air, he can catch the whiff of that strange floral perfume. He’s not ignorant of the things men and women do, and not naïve enough to imagine that the hut is too rough an environment for them to do it in, but there’s only one set of footprints to the door. He pauses, listening.

The boy is humming to himself. John can’t make sense of the tune. It’s nothing but noise. The boy’s teeth must be chattering too, because now and then it wavers eerily. The light inside flares up orange from a fire and the floorboards creak.

Perhaps he’s dancing again.

Creeping up, John crouches by the door and peeks through a knothole in the wall, through which the light is shining. He can’t see anything at first, just the dusty floor and the edge of what looks like a big saucepan, the top of which is flickering.

Then all at once there’s an eye staring back at him.

John yells and falls back. The boy swings the door open laughing a rich, deep laugh.

“What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?” John barks back, scrabbling to his feet, hot with embarrassment.

“Waiting for the ice to firm up, of course. You were spying on me. Who…?” The boy has shifted in the doorway and the light from the fire in the pot fallen across John’s face. The boy stares, pale, and amazed. “I saw you in the window last night,” he says.

“I’m staying with Mrs. Hudson.”

This doesn’t seem to be an answer the boy is looking for because he steps back, confused. “No?”

“I am,” John says, picking himself up from the floor. “What are you doing in there?”

The boy regards him. He’s a head taller than John, but John doesn’t think that he’s older. He seems to be ageless instead, young but acting old, or old but somehow young. The wind has nipped bright spots into his cheeks, and pulled his hair out of place. “I was waiting for the ice to thicken.”

“I saw you dancing,” John says, staring back. To his surprise, the boy flushes.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did,” John says flatly. “In the garden.”

“That wasn’t dancing. That was-”

“It was dancing,” John interrupts. “I liked it.”

The boy is taken aback. “Oh. You’re not lying.”

“No,” John agrees “But you are. I don’t think the ice is going to be thick enough tonight, so what are you really doing?”

“Wasting time,” the boy sighs. He pushes the door a fraction more open so that John can see inside. It’s as sparse as it was before, except for the old metal pot set up with a fire burning in it, and a stub of candle in a holder on the floor. “Come in.”

With the door closed, it’s almost warm, although the breeze still sneaks through the gaps in the planks and keeps it from being actually comfortable. The boy sits down in the dirt, careless of his clothes, and John copies him.

They sit across from one another, on either side of the fire. The boy has a long, pale face that changes expressions as quickly as its owner has thoughts. It’s a face full of life, John thinks, perhaps a little sad and hard lived, pale and angular perhaps from bad food and not enough of it. But the mouth is generous and the eyes betray a certain longing to please that speaks on a deep level to John, so that he’d like to put out a hand and push the other’s face into a shy smile just to see what it would be like.

“What’s your name?” the boy asks, once he has become used to the company and the idea that John isn’t about to evaporate into thin air.

“John. What’s yours?”

“Holmes,” he hesitates, bashful again. “William Sherlock.”

“I saw your name on a-” John stops himself from rudely saying ‘gravestone’, and blunders on, “At the church today. In the town over the hill.”

“My grandfather’s tomb?”

John is puzzled. “No… can’t be. It’s too old.”

“That’s the only thing there with it on,” the boy says, and because John is staring at him, puzzled, busies himself with something in his pocket. He has what appears to be a garden pea in a matchbox, which he opens in order to roll the pea back and forth, focussed on this rather than meet John’s eye directly.

“Where did you learn to dance, William? It is ‘William or Will’?”

“Holmes,” the boy says, awkward. “…or Sherlock.”

“Which?”

“…Sherlock.”

“Fancy,” John says, making the other boy flush again. “I’m not teasing. My name’s boring. Just John Watson.”

“John Watson,” the other breathes, sounding surprised. “It is such a common name.”

John shrugs. “Anyway, you didn’t answer. Where did you learn to dance like that?”

“I did not learn it anywhere. I just know.”

“Can you skate?”

“Of course,” Sherlock looks up at him from under his curls, and his eyes are blue like winter ice and distant as the arctic. He rolls the pea between finger and thumb back and forth, back and forth.

John soldiers on. “And do jumps and stuff?”

The eyes thaw out suddenly to amusement. “Of course.”

“I thought so. You jumped when you danced.”

“Where are you from?” Sherlock says, looking at him carefully, “I can’t place your accent.”

“Chelmsford, mostly. It’s near London.”

Sherlock does not appear to fully believe him, but he says, “I’d like to go to London one day.”

“It’s alright,” John says, leaning his chin on his hand. “Ted took us to see the Tower, that was cool, and we were going to go to the war museum this year but we got Polly on top of Douglas and…there hasn’t been time.”

Sherlock gives him a piercing look. “The children are sickly?”

“No, they’re not ill. They’ve just got special needs.”

“Oh.” Another of those perceptive glances and then a wash of strange relief seems to cross Sherlock’s face. He wipes his brow. “Ah, I thought you were… someone else. So you are just a Coram boy?”

“A what?”

“A charity child.”

“I am not! Say that again, and I’ll belt you,” John promises.

“But they’re not your siblings, and you don’t live with your parents. Are you an orphan?”

“No,” John says, uncomfortable. “My mum lives in Leeds now.”

“She gave you up,” Sherlock says. “Mine also.”

“What?”

“That is why I am here,” Sherlock says bitterly. “Sent away. They think there is something wrong with me.”

“Is there?” John asks.

“I cannot tell,” Sherlock says, sounding tired. “Maybe. It is likely,” he says more quietly. “I think it is being in this place.” He takes a pin from the lapel of his coat and skewers the pea decisively, holding it over the candle flame. His gaze goes distant again, and when he glances at John, he seems to be having some doubts.

‘So he’s lonely,’ John thinks, ‘Like me.’

He cocks an eyebrow at the boy as soon as he looks up. “Are you a lunatic or something then?”

Sherlock laughs at that, turning the pea over in the very tip of the flame. Warmed up, it smells strongly like perfume.

“I am different, somehow.”

“Maybe you’re special needs too. I’ve heard that. Stella says special needs come in all sorts. You can be really brainy but then need more help with easy stuff like talking, or going to the shops, or concentrating, or making friends.”

Sherlock turns the blistering pea in the flame again, evidently thinking hard. Softly, he says, “Yes…”

John adds, “Or sleeping. But then like, maybe you can do maths like a genius or draw amazingly well or something like that.” He waves his hands back and forth like a set of scales and then shrugs. “What is that?”

“Yen,” Sherlock says, pulling the pea apart into sticky strands. “You smoke it.”

“Like cigarettes?”

“Tobacco? Yes. Similar. Better, in fact. Here, I’ll share,” he adds, magnanimously. He fiddles inside his coat pocket with one hand and takes out a pair of slender pieces of wood. He dabs the sticky blob from the pin into the bowl of the pipe and twists the other half on quickly, sinking back to recline onto his elbow.

“You have to lie down. It works better lying down.”

John sinks into the dust beside him, toasting his feet on the tin pot fire. Sherlock dips the other side of the bowl into the candle flame until it steams and then inhales. His eyelids flutter. “Here,” he says, passing John the pipe.

John has smoked before, once, at school behind the hedge by the music rooms. He hadn’t especially liked it, but it had long since occurred to him that liking it wasn’t the point of smoking.

Gamely, he waves the end into the flame and then sucks on the pipe. It tastes of bitter mould and perfume, and he almost retches on it, but then it’s not so bad at all.

In fact, after a second tentative puff, it feels like sinking into the most wonderful embrace. John sprawls back on the floor, disoriented. Sherlock’s fingers caress the pipe from his own and he sees him smiling over the candle, eyes closed as he pulls smoke into his mouth.

John is half aware that not all is well with this situation, but he feels so quiet, it doesn’t seem to matter. “I’m warm,” he murmurs. He has the headiest feeling of completeness; so beautiful he could weep.

Sherlock is humming again. John’s face hurts. He touches his cheeks and realises that he’s smiling. His lips are numb. It’s strange.

The pipe barely contains enough for three puffs each, and Sherlock takes the lion’s share. He snuffs the candle and leaves the pipe on the floor, stretching out with a huge sigh.　

Time stretches like out like a toffee left in the sun. John floats along in a pleasant fog, with no sense of concern at all. He can’t feel the cold or the hardness of the floor. John blinks slowly and opens his eyes to discover himself leaning against the wall of the hut, Sherlock propped at his side. His face is close as he whispers, “Are you really here, ghost? Are you living now?”

“Not sure,” John answers. He dreams while awake of nothing until gradually the fire in the pot dies down to embers and he starts to become aware of the fact that his backside has grown numb from sitting on the floor so long, and he’s tired.

“What time is it?” John mumbles, rubbing his eyes. He creaks to his feet and wipes his running nose on the back of his hand.

“Late,” Sherlock says, blinking hard and easing upright as well. He stretches, and then stumbles around, dousing the pot fire with snow scraped from the roof of the hut and hiding it behind the woodpile. He wipes out the pipe with a filthy handkerchief and pockets it.

“Come,” he says. They stumble out together on frozen feet. John trips on his own toes, holding onto Sherlock’s sleeve, making the other boy startle. He stares at John’s hand like it’s completely alien to him, and then, shaking his head as if in a fog, props John under the armpit until he’s found his feet.

“I’ve got to go,” John says, pulling himself free from Sherlock’s grasp at the edge of the pond.

“Must you?”

“It’s cold, and late,” John says. The smoke in his brain stops him from feeling worried about this, but he also has the sense that it would be a very good idea to go back inside and go to bed now. Sherlock stands there, however, still looking lonely.

“I have no more yen until Whitney returns,” he says, as if to himself. “Is this the end? No more?”

“I’ll be around until the 6th,” John says, “If you want to meet again.”

“Yes! Yes, of course, of course,” Sherlock sighs in relief. “Always until Twelfth Night. Come again, please.” Then he rubs his face again and mutters, “You have smoked too much…” shaking his head he thrusts out a hand. “Well met, Mr. John Watson. Forgive my manners.”

John laughs at the formality and shakes his hand. “Nice to meet you too.” His numb fingers find the warm in Sherlock’s and they tingle with pins and needles in the other’s grasp. It seems a pity to let go.

“If the pond freezes,” John adds, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Can I come see you skating?”

Sherlock’s face billows bright with pleasure. “Yes! Skate with me.”

“Ok,” John says again, even though he hasn’t got any skates. Distantly, the clock tower of the church thuds out the hour.

“Late!” Sherlock says, “And you not faded after all… but I cannot stay any longer. Good night.” He shivers and John nods.

“Go,” he says, sensing that the boy is afraid of getting into trouble. It edges in on John’s mind that he ought to really get inside before he’s missed as well. He turns and, waving goodbye, moves away up the lawn. A heartbeat later, Sherlock moves in the opposite direction towards the hedge.

John watches him over his shoulder until he sees Sherlock vanish over St. Christopher’s Bottom, and only then does John wonder where Sherlock could be going.

____  
____

**TBC**


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas Eve. John finds the another part of the statue, and begins to understand the true implications of its power.

**Part VII**

By morning, the events in the hut seem no more real than a dream. John wakes still laced with a degree of lassitude that makes getting out of bed an impossibility. He's so late and lazy for breakfast that Mrs. Hudson not only knocks on his door but, when he only answers with a grunt, comes into his room as well.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asks, pushing a hand under his fringe to feel his forehead. John grunts and squirms away. “Catch a cold?” she wonders, twitching the curtains open. It's another clear day, bright blue and frozen.

“Are you coming down?” she asks and then picks up his discarded jumper from the floor and stops. Through the tired fog in his brain, John suddenly realises he doesn't want her to do that, but it's too late.

Puzzled, she lifts the jumper to her face and sniffs it, once, twice, increasingly perplexed and then just horrified.

“No,” she says, in complete disbelief. “John, you can't have. Oh, John, you didn't!”

John struggles to get free of the bedclothes. No easy lie springs to his lips; he just reaches for the jumper as if she'll forget all about it as soon as it leaves her hands. She grips it closer.

“But where did you get it?” Her distress fires up his belated conscience and he starts to question the very same matter himself.

“It was that boy, he had it.”

“What boy?”

“The one by the pond. I told you about him. You said he was Mr. Lestrade, but it wasn't.”

“But what boy? Not Gregory!”

“No, someone else. He's local - I mean he lives nearby. Somewhere…” Where? Now John thinks about it he’s seen hardly any houses this side of the hill.

“John do you have any idea what you've done?”

John has only an inkling, and his own ignorance frightens him. “I feel fine,” he protests.

“Of course you feel fine! Stuffing yourself with opium- that's what it's for!”

“What? What’s-? He said it was like tobacco.”

“You little fool, John.”

John would be offended except she's right and she's so heartbroken. He's disgusted with himself. Smoking something unknown just because of some boy…

“I'm sorry.”

“How on earth did he get opium in this day and age?” she wonders again. “Surely it's all heroin now…”

That’s a word John knows and has been taught to distrust, and it shakes the sleepiness from his system like a dash of cold water. “What do you mean ‘heroin’?” he asks, voice suddenly very small.

“Cut with incense no doubt; I've a good mind to telephone Ted, young man.”

“No! Please don't. Please don't send me back!”

John clamps his mouth shut hard right away but the words are out there. He folds his hands into his lap and stares at the floor. He supposes Mrs. Hudson has every right to pack him back to Chelmsford in disgrace. John writhes with guilt and humiliation.

However, she sighs and folds his jumper over her arm. “Come down for breakfast,” is all she says. “And we'll see.”

She pauses at the doorway, giving him a reproachful, teary look. “And John,” she says, quietly. “No more.”

____

John is subdued for the rest of the morning, creeping around on eggshells under the weight of Mrs. Hudson's disapproval. But she doesn't ring Stella and Ted and she doesn't mention it again either, so that by lunchtime John is starting to wonder if he's been forgiven.

It has also occurred to him to wonder how Mrs. Hudson was able to recognise the smell of opium, but as it's not an appropriate time to ask her directly, all he can do is wonder.

He bides his time instead, being apologetic around the house. Mrs. Hudson is distracted, and when at 2 o'clock Greg comes calling they're both relieved to see him.

“How do!” Greg calls coming in through the kitchen and oblivious to the atmosphere. “Bought your firewood up, Mrs.”

“Thank you, dear.”

“Also came to ask if John wants to come see Mike with me. Mike's bust his knee,” he reminds John, helping himself to a mince pie.

“Can I?” John asks, uncertain “Or I don't mind staying in.”

“Why’d you want to stay in? It's nice out. Bit slippy out mind, but you’ll be alright on that mountain bike. I swapped my tyres over this morning.”

“I could stay just to help out and stuff…”

“No, I think that's ok, John,” Mrs. Hudson says, who truth be told is feeling worse for having John trail her around the house with a face like a wet cat. “I think I can spare you. I think I'll go and read my book for a while.”

John brightens. “Really?”

“Yes, go. Have fun.” She gives him a smile and touches his shoulder. “And stay out of trouble,” she whispers.

John nods. “I'll stick with Greg,” he promises, pulling on his coat and damp shoes and the gloves that she made him.

“What was that about,” Greg asks once they're wheeling carefully down the drive.

“Nothing,” John says and then realises if he doesn't want to damage his new friendship with Greg too, then he'd better be a bit more honest. “Got in a bit of trouble.”

Greg whistles. “Must have. What did you do?”

“Caught me smoking,” John chooses to say.

“Right,” Greg says, re-evaluating John.

“I already said sorry. And I am sorry.”

“Why do it then?” Greg asks.

“Dunno. Wasn't thinking really. Just got caught up in the moment.”

“That's alright,” Greg agrees evenly. “I've smoked too. Pinched my dad's.”

“Get away,” John says, pleased.

“Did as well. And I didn't get caught like some chumps I know.”

“Alright, I am a chump,” John agrees.

“That's alright, Mike's a chump too!” Greg laughs and pedals off ahead.

____

Mike Stamford’s house is one of the old ones right on the far edge of town. They leave their bikes in the front garden and Greg cheerfully leans on the doorbell until Mrs. Stamford lets them in.

John gawps at the interior, Greg chuckling, shoving him in and up the stairs and deflecting all of Mrs. Stamford’s small talk in one easy-going bundle. Unlike Mrs. Hudson’s school, the inside of Mike’s house has been aggressively modernised. John catches a glimpse of a white-carpeted livingroom (unthinkable in John’s life) and an enormous telly.

“Is Mike rich?” John hisses, stumbling up the stairs.

“Yeah,” Greg says easily. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

Mike is a round-faced boy with glasses and a grin that splits his face like a slice of melon.

“Hullo,” he says, when they enter, dropping a magazine into his lap. “Wondered when you’d show up.”

“How’s the peg leg?”

“Bloody awful,” Mike grins. “Been bored stupid. Who’s this?”

Introductions exchanged, Greg helps himself to the chair at Mike’s desk and to the rugby ball left there. He tosses it to John.

“Do you play?”

“Football,” John says.

“Football’s alright too,” Mike agrees, and a breezy conversation kicks off, which runs right until half-time when Mrs. Stamford interrupts with a tray of orange squash.

“You should come back in summer,” Greg says, gulping his drink. “There’s loads to do. Fishing, biking. Mike’s got a boat.”

“My dad’s got a boat,” Mike corrects. “Down in Dartmouth. I get to go when I want because me mum and dad, they divorced and feel dead guilty about it.”

John smiles at this, appreciating Mike’s forthright and wicked sense of humour.

“I’ve told him I want a jet when I’m eighteen. I think he might an’ all.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, think he’s gonna marry this bird he met in Texas. Bloody awful.”

“Snow’s good,” Greg says, changing the subject. “Hope there’s a bit more soon. Shame you can’t get out in it. ”

“Not my thing anyway,” Mike says reasonably. “Don’t mind skiing, but that’s mainly for the fondue. You like your winter sports, John?”

“Don’t mind ‘em,” John answers. “We went sledging the other day, and everyone keeps talking about being able to walk on the pond if it freezes solid enough, but not sure what I’ll do.”

“No?”

“No skates or anything,” John says with a shrug.

“Take mine,” Mike offers at once. “Never use ‘em. I’ll ask me mum. Mum!” He bellows down the stairs. “I’m lending John me skates!”

“Alright, love! Where are they?”

“Cupboard, maybe!” Mike roars back and then gives John a thumbs up. “She’ll find ‘em,” he promises. “She’s a dead good finder. Anyway, who wants to play Lemmings?”

____

“They’re not going to break, you know,” Greg says afterwards, while they’re wheeling their bikes back towards the middle of the town.

“I know,” John says, needled, but he can’t help but hold the ice skates gingerly like they might break. They’re black with white laces, unused and about the coolest thing John has ever held.

“Mike’s alright, isn’t he?”

“Mike’s great,” John agrees. If asked to stand in front of the Queen and attest to the alrightness of Mike Stamford, at this point, John would swear it in blood. Greg giggles at him and gives him a shove.

“Right, I’ve probably got to scoot.”

“No,” John says, disappointed.

“Sorry; promised Dad I’d help out with the turkeys. I’ll see you later, yeah? You’ll get back to the house ok?”

“Think so,” John says, and then catches Greg’s elbow before he can leave. The shops around him have given him a thought.

“Listen, I need to get Mrs. Hudson something.”

“Like a Christmas present?”

“Well, yeah. Kind of. Stella got me some soap to give her but I think I should get something else.”

“Why?”

“To make up for the smoking and, just, look, I need to get something nice for Mrs. Hudson,” John says. “I can’t just give her soap for Christmas.”

“But girls like soap,” Greg says, puzzled. “They don’t even think you’re saying they smell.”

“What are you getting your mum?”

“A galvanised feed bin.”

“A what?”

“It’s for her fancy chickens.”

“Right,” John says, “I don’t think Mrs. Hudson wants that.”

“How much money have you got?”

A search of John’s pockets comes to £2.38, and his bag of cola cubes, now all stuck together. Greg chips one off and contemplates the coins. “Try the junk shop next to the library. Maybe they’ve got a nice pot or something.”

John waves him off down the road and then wheels the bicycle into town looking for the library. The junk shop is right where Greg said it would be, with piles of miscellaneous boxes and things outside.

John picks his way through to the door, and peeks inside. A lady is sat behind the counter, polishing a teapot. Feeling like he’s intruding, John creeps in, trying not to knock anything with his elbows.

“Comics and models by the door,” the woman says, without looking up.

John turns to see where she means. At the foot of the shop window, there’s a row of boxes overflowing with books and documents, and a shelf piled up with old toys and models of trains and cars.

“Oh,” says John, itching to look through them. “I was looking for something else…”

She looks up from her teapot and fixes him with dark eyes. “What sort of thing?”

“I don’t know. Something for the lady I’m staying with, for Christmas.”

The lady puts the teapot down and flows out from behind the counter. She’s diminutive; only a hair taller than John and pretty enough to make his mouth go a bit dry.

“What does she like?”

John considers. “Knitting, cooking. Um… Cars. Her house,” he recalls. “It’s the old school behind the hill. St. Christopher’s.”

The lady just says ‘hmm’ in response to this, and eases her way through the mess, revealing that despite the lack of space there’s some sort of system here. She comes back with a box and carefully distributes its contents over the counter.

“You can touch,” she says, when John just stands there staring.

“Oh. Thanks.” He picks through the selection. There’s a relatively modern model car in racing green, and a thick slice of wood the size of John’s palm with a flower carved in it, and a small plaster statue of a one-handed man.

“Er… what are they?”

“Dinky Ferrari Cooper, Japanese candy press, and a plaster statue.”

“It’s broken,” John says, pointing to the statue. “He’s missing a hand.”

“Half price,” she offers.

John puts his money on the table. “I’ve got this.”

He ends up with the statuette and the car. The statue is crumbling a little around the bottom, but she wraps it carefully up in newspaper for him, and tells him a coat of white paint will improve it no end.

“Thanks,” John says not sure if he’s got a good deal or not, but at the end of the day, he supposes it’s better than just soap.

_____  
_____

**Part VIII**

At the house, John tests the ice again. It’s thicker than before, but not yet safe. Likewise with Mrs. Hudson, she’s treating him as she was before, but John senses there’s a gap where her complete trust once was. He smuggles the gifts, which seem small and silly now, up to his room and worries about where he’s going to get wrapping paper.

He rummages the living room and other used rooms in the house while she’s cooking dinner. The bottom drawer of an old desk thankfully has some paper in it. It’s not Christmas paper, but he hopes she won’t mind. He peels it out of the pile and folds it under his jumper, and then stops.

Over the sound of Mrs. Hudson chopping carrots downstairs, there’s another noise. It’s not the radio, or he wouldn’t have paid it any attention. It’s a violin, playing somewhere. John stands, listening.

He follows the noise upstairs, into the empty part of the house. The music ebbs and flows, fading in and out of his hearing, but it grows as he passes down the corridor. John pushes open a door to a room that he knows is empty, and it stops.

John stands on the threshold, heart in his mouth.

“Hello?”

The room has nothing in it but a clutter of junk still waiting to be cleared out, but still John has the impression that he’s not alone. He swallows. Dimmock had mentioned that there were ghosts and he hadn’t believed it. ‘I’m not going to believe it now.’

“Nice tune. Play a bit louder,” he says boldly instead, and shuts the door.

____

That night, no one appears in the garden when he watches, save for a lean fox that scuttles down the side of the pond away from the Lestrade farm and sets the dogs all barking.

The morning after, he checks the shed. There’s nothing there except the dust; no footprints and no lingering smell of flowers. John’s not sure if he’s glad or disappointed.

He sits on the swing, but the ropes are rotting, and he doesn’t dare swing on it. Still, it’s pleasant to sit there for a moment, just taking in a bit of sunshine. It has snowed again overnight, and the whiteness lies thicker, all the previous scuffles erased. John had hoped Greg might call so they can sledge again, but with one day to go before Christmas, the farm is busy, and he doesn’t appear. Worse, John’s trainers are increasingly pathetic in this kind of weather and he can only wander the garden for a while before his feet get too cold to stand it.

He eases the swing back and forth slightly, looking up into the branches of the old tree. There are dark splodges up in the crown like someone’s dripped big circles of ink across it. Too big to be birds nests, anyway, and John has never seen mistletoe growing before so he can’t tell what it is. Overhead an airplane passes, so distant that it drags its noise eerily behind it.

John leans his head on the rope and thinks of the violin music. Maybe it was just a trick of the hills. Sometimes that happens, he’s heard. The shape of the land can bend sound, or sometimes metalwork picks up radio waves, or maybe snow on a field can acts like the surface of the ocean or the sand in a desert, bouncing sound and light over from somewhere else.

He’s still wondering about it, when he hears a bell ringing. John turns his head, because it’s not the sonorous gong of the church; it’s much closer and the kind of tinklety rattle of a hand bell.

‘Is that Mrs. Hudson, calling me in for lunch?’ He doesn’t have a watch but his stomach tells him he can’t have been out in the garden all that long and it’s too early for lunch. ‘Maybe she wants something else.’

He gets up, turning back towards the front of the house and the bell stops. John treads up the lawn slowly, pressing his damp shoes into the indents he’d left on the way down. He’s focuses on this so much that his heart leaps into his throat when all of a sudden, something runs past him.

Or rather, it doesn’t.

There’s the sudden thud of footsteps, treading fast and heavy in the snow, but when John instinctively looks down, there’s only his single set of steps leading up down to the swing and up again. Then the sound of other steps following and John has the strangest feeling of the world slowing down. In that blank white and blue space, things are no longer real.

He’s stopped still as they stamp up towards him at a run, and someone’s breathing hard. There’s a sound of hurried scraping, scooping, packing; in short all the sounds of a group of children making snowballs, except that they do not speak, and there’s the muted sound of hard things falling against flesh and clicking against one another. John thinks it sounds like someone shaking small stones or marbles out into open hands.

John looks round him, his body slow to react to his thoughts, like he’s trying to wake up but can’t quite manage it. Down the bottom of the slope, there’s something there, he thinks. Something darting back and forth in a limited space, held there. John blinks because the snow is blinding and dark patches are dancing on his vision. No, shapes. Three of them, one held in by the two; a sheep between two dogs?

The vision blurs, and John blinks and for a single moment, the image solidifies, crystal clear; the boy turning, his face defiant and frightened, the other two blocking his escape. The pack moving down the slope with snowballs in hand, all of them in the same dark coats, like shadows on the snow.

Another purposeful tread passes John and as it does, something whispers past his ear; a voice, singsong and cruel.

“Let’s play a game.”

And then it’s gone.

____

 

John has the statuette on a piece of newspaper on his bedroom floor, with the tin of open paint. He daubs it on carefully, trying not to obliterate the features of the man. The paint is thick and has seen better days but what can you expect from something you found in a crumbling stable? He is at least picking around the lumpy bits.

Mrs. Hudson has gone to bed, and he has the house to himself. Tomorrow is going to be busy and he wants to get the gifts wrapped and ready before morning. He tucks the blankets around his lap against the cold. Now and then he untucks them to get up and peep out the window, but the garden is flat and empty.

Besides, the day has been strange enough, and he promised Mrs. Hudson to keep out of trouble.

John hums as he works, not very tunefully, truth be told, but he hums because that’s what you do when you’re painting. The car sits on one side, waiting its turn. He hopes Mrs. Hudson likes the statue. It’s a typical sort of saint, with a beard and robes, and a stick in the hand that isn’t missing. John has modelled the missing one with blu-tack, and glued it on, with the hope that the paint will hold it all together. He has not attempted fingers, and the resulting blobby mitten looks rather like the venerable old-timer is fist pumping madly.

John is holding it up to check for spots he’s missed, when he senses that someone is watching him.

“Hello?” he says, but of course, no one answers. Best to pretend it doesn’t bother him, John decides, and determinedly he resumes humming. His repertoire of tunes is limited and instinctively he opts for something cheerful, and We Wish You A Merry Christmas is the first thing that springs to mind.

John dabs paint over the legs of the statue. “Good tidings we bring, to you and your kin…”

Someone sniffles. John looks up.

It’s a damp sound, like they’ve got a cold. There’s a heartbeat and then another sniff and then the sound of someone clearing their throat. It’s hardly ominous, but there’s nothing in the direction of the noise but the wardrobe.

“…We wish you a merry Christmas…”

A little gulping sound, a tiny intake of breath and then an almost silent straining of air through a nose that would be completely unidentifiable to most people, except that John has particular experience of listening to other people struggling to cry as quietly as they possibly can in the dead of night. John lowers his paintbrush and looks at the wardrobe.

“Are you alright?”

The stifled gasp tells John that he can be heard. He puts the brush down on the newspaper and gets up, shuffling towards the wardrobe in his blankets. He’s shivering, not just with the cold. “D-did you have a nightmare?”

The only reply is a very faint crinkle of fabric moving. “It’s ok,” John says, as much for himself as this sad stranger. He hesitates. He does not want to open the wardrobe in case there is something inside of it, and equally he doesn’t want to open it and find nothing, like he did with the violin. After all, hearing things that aren’t there isn’t a good sign.

“I’m just going to sit here and paint,” John tells the ghost, retreating back to his space. “So… stop crying, please.”

A concentrated rustling of fabric this time, and the bump of something against wood. John has the feeling of being watched more than ever.

“This is a present,” John says holding up the statue for the wardrobe to see. “It’s a bit old, so I’m painting it. See? I don’t know who this is though.”

He dips his paintbrush and the sadness in the room seems to calm. He can hear very soft breathing. “Did you catch a cold?” John asks. “It’s been freezing lately.”

He screws himself up to smile at the wardrobe. There’s a familiar creak, and John thinks, ‘That’s it! There was a bed where the wardrobe is now! That’s where they are, sitting up in bed.’

The statue is almost finished and John wipes his fingers clean on the newspaper. “I just have to wrap these,” he comments aloud, because it’s awkward having someone stare at him who he can’t see in silence.

He wraps the Dinky, twisting the paper over it. “This is a Ferrari,” John says, holding it up and enunciating, like his teacher does at school. “Ferrari. It can drive really fast and they’re good for racing, although this one is old and they look a lot better now. Hold on, I’m not very good at tying…” He pauses to struggle with the string and ends up with the car roughly done up like a chocolate, tied at both ends with the paper sticking out.

He blows on the statue to dry it more, but it’s tacky and no good to wrap yet. “It needs to dry,” John says, with regret. He moves it carefully into the space under the bed to air out overnight and out of sight and then drops all his blankets back on the bed. When he turns back, the feeling of being watched has vanished. John listens for a long, long moment, but there’s no sound from the wardrobe. “I’m going to bed now,” John tells the silent empty room. “So… go to sleep.”

Then he hurries himself under the covers, pulling them up to his nose.  
____  
____

**Part IX**

On Christmas Eve, they go to Midnight Mass. The chapel is down the lane between the old school and the town, and they walk there in the snow. The temperatures have stayed low and brutal; the garden is flooded with small birds vying for the scraps that Mrs. Hudson puts out and the old stable roof is jagged with ice.

John shivers inside his coat, folding his hands into his armpits. Mrs. Hudson has her collar turned up against the wind. “We’ll come straight back after,” she says, teeth chattering, “And have hot chocolate before bed.”

The old chapel is a blaze of colour and busy with people. The congregation isn’t large, but it fills the tiny space and they have to squeeze in at the back by the door, where the wind sneaks in and bites at their ankles.

John is no believer, nor is he much of a singer either, but he enjoys the music, which fills the space from floor to rafter. Squished into the corner, he finds himself alongside the window, in which is set the marble body of a man with a babe in arms.

The face of the marble baby is serene and penetrating, two fingers raised in the benediction. Mrs. Hudson had called it a cheap copy, but there’s something about it that makes John keep looking; there’s something alive about it. The arm of the man is lovingly cradling the infant close against his chest, and John almost imagines he can see the belly move as the man breathes.

The baby’s lips are pursed, or parted, as if it’s about to say something, and John stops listening to everything around him, caught in the spell. ‘I can hear the violin,’ John wonders, faintly. ‘It’s playing again.’

And then someone jostles him and he turns.

And stares.

John leans back against the wall of the chapel, eyes wide because the lights are gone. It’s still lit, but the white electric lights pinned up around the church no longer exist and instead in each window and overhead there are candles. Candles and candles, throwing out warm, red light, and the chapel is dimmer and cosier and the people’s faces are harder to make out, only John can see they are all strangers to him.

He’s no longer at Mrs. Hudson’s elbow; instead there’s a muddle of women in long skirts and men in strange shirts, and John has a bone-deep feeling that they are not from the town he has come to know in the past few days.

The carol soars; the choir is singing the tune to O Come All Ye Faithful, but the words are not in English; and then John startles again to realise that it’s not just the choir now; there’s music as well.

Craning up on tiptoe, John can see them filling a single pew at the front of the church, boys all in the same dark suit. One plays a recorder, another a little drum and the third is leaning into the bow of a violin.

Dazed, John wobbles back and then freezes again. It is the boy from the shed, the same player he must have heard in the house; Sherlock.

His face is pale above the white tie he wears around his throat, and made starker, in fact, by the black coat. He looks younger as well, his mouth held tight together and his eyes shifting with an air of distraction. His gaze is moving over the congregation of the chapel, the stained glass windows and the people in front of him. He shifts from foot to foot.

The carol draws out to a long note at the end and then fades, leaving John reeling, and then suddenly people are filing out of the church and it’s all over. John hangs back from the mass, letting the people slip away from him, although they seem to be huddling by the door, chatting and passing the time.

The boys are marched out in a line, the littlest first, and the tallest at the back; just five boys. Through the thinning crowd, John meets Sherlock’s eye and the boy stumbles with surprise, turning his head back to look at John until the boy behind him swats him hard between the shoulder blades and pushes him on.

Unwilling to be left alone, John scurries after them.

No one seems to pay him any attention as he weaves through the crowd by the door. Outside, it doesn’t feel as alien as it did inside the church. The lane is just as dark and snowy as it was when he arrived, although the whinny of horses nearby makes John startle.

He is not the only person following the small trail of boys back towards the school. There are others behind him; adults arm in arm, and more ahead of the boys and their master. Servants, John realises.

There’s no sign of Mrs. Hudson at all.

As they come down the slope of the hill, John sees the school. The windows on the ground floor are all lit, and the outbuildings are different too; newer and busier. John can smell livestock. It’s not his home anymore.

The boys file into the school, leaving John shivering in the lane. What now? He’s about to turn back, suddenly afraid that they will lock the church, when someone stops at his side and says, “Boy?”

John pivots, taken aback, and finds himself face-to-face with a woman. No, a girl. She can’t be much older than he is, only a few years maybe, only with her hair buried under a cap, she looks older. She’s well bundled up against the cold, and looking at him curiously.

“I don’t know you.”

“No,” John agrees, lost. “I’m new. I’m-” His mind flies for an excuse for being there; anything. “I’m looking for Sherlock Holmes.”

“Master Holmes? Why, what business do you have with him?”

“You know him?” John says in relief. “I need to talk to him.”

She purses her lips and studies him from head to foot. John tugs his coat closer and frowns.

“How do you know him?” she wants to know, planting her hands on her hops.

John hesitates, but he can’t see any other option other than to step forward and whisper. “My name’s John. Can you just tell him that, that I’m here?”

“The Christmas Boy-!” She steps back, looking him up and down again. “Why, you’re real!”

“Of course I’m real,” John says, hoping very much that he was. He feels real, but everything else seems so strange.

“Well, bless my soul, I had not imagined- oh, quickly!” she takes his elbow and hastens him off of the road and out of the way as another group of people pass by on the road.

“So you are John Watson?” she says, wonderingly. “Mr. Watson himself.”

“Yes. John,” he answers, feeling peculiar at being called ‘Mr. Watson’. It doesn’t suit him.

She eyes him, pink no doubt from the cold.

“Then, I am Martha,” she says, bobbing, still thinking, still pink. Then she says, “To see Master Holmes, you shall have to wait until after the house has gone to sleep, if we can think where to put you. Come with me.”

Decisively, she catches his wrist and pulls him further into the dark. She is fearless, John thinks, amazed. Martha hitches her skirts up and runs over the uneven ground like it’s second nature to her. She beckons him on, hopping over a fence and leading him through trees that John has never seen by the house before, up to the edge of the pond.

“Wait inside,” she says, gesturing to the shed. “No one will be down here tonight. I will return soon.”

Grateful, John hurries in.

The shed is different too. It’s so subtle, if he weren’t looking for it, he wouldn’t have noticed, and he can’t put his finger on exactly where the change lies, but there’s something about it that is definitely different.

He waits for what seems like forever, just waiting. It has long gone midnight now and must be the early hours of the morning. John stares at the walls of the shed until it starts to seem like complete foolishness, or a dream. If he goes outside, surely it will just be the same old lawn and house and snow- but there’s a little tap at the door, and Martha slips in.

“He will come,” she says, smiling, shivering. “He must wait to come away; the schoolmasters are sitting up by the fire drinking and he cannot leave while they are there. Here, it is cold.” She thrusts both hands into the pocket of her apron and brings out a napkin wrapped around what John discovers to be a pastry of some kind, still hot from the kitchen.

“They are very good,” she tells him, taking out a second and wolfishly biting into it.

“Do you work here?” John asks around a hot mouthful.

“I do indeed; more to my shame, I am a maid.”

“Is that bad?”

“It is if you were lead to think you might not need be a maid,” she replies tartly. “I was to be a governess, but well, that is none of your business.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing more to be sorry for. It is what it is. I am glad you are real.”

“So am I. Why wouldn’t I be real?”

Martha lowers her pie and “He tells stories oftentimes. Ravings sometimes. He’s a good lad, but…”

“The smoking.”

She shakes her head. “He is unhappy here. I think he cannot be happy anywhere. Where is it that you come from, John?”

“Near here,” he says carefully, not sure how to answer that question.

“How?” she asks, cocking her head to one side. “I know every boy in the village, and you are not one of them.”

“Well, I’ve come from far away.”

“Near, far; you cannot say if you are here or there. Are you teasing me?”

“No, it’s just hard to explain.”

“I don’t mind teasing,” Martha says, perching herself on the wood stack. “Boys cannot seem to help themselves from teasing. It is in their nature.”

“I wasn’t teasing,” John says, brushing crumbs off of his hands.

“Tell me more about you,” she urges, “Master Holmes says he sees you often; I had supposed you were a ghost. There are ghosts, you know.”

“Ghosts?”

“In the school. There is an old lady,” Martha leans forward, eyes wide, “She appears in kitchen, strangely dressed, always in the daytime, except it is only I who sees her, and I have seen her walk through the kitchen table.”

“Are you teasing me now, Martha?”

She laughs merrily. “No, I swear I am not! I am not a liar, and cook has beaten me twice for speaking of her.”

“Sounds spooky. What does she look like?”

“She is small, with her hair cropped short like she has been terribly ill. She wears bright colours and rings, and,” Martha looks embarrassed. “You can see her legs.”

“Mostly sort of purples,” John says, with a strange feeling. “And sort of flicky hair? And… a wedding ring and a little one on her other finger?”

“Yes!” Martha goggles at him. “You have seen her!”

“I think that’s Mrs. Hudson,” John says, overwhelmed at the idea.

“Mrs. Hudson?” Martha looks completely offended. “Mrs. Hudson is nearly 80! I know Mrs. Hudson; she is a rich lady who lives on Green Lane. My Lady is not Mrs. Hudson!”

“A… different Mrs. Hudson,” John says, thinking hard. Could there be two? Or did Mrs. Hudson, his Mrs. Hudson know about this place? The whole thing is giving John a headache.

Before he can contemplate it any further, however, there is a knock at the door and Sherlock steps in, taking off his hat.

He pauses in the doorway, looking between the two of them, and then seems to regain his footing. “Martha,” he says. “Cook has missed you. You had best stay away from the kitchen tonight. I am sorry.”

Martha pales. “Cook will be drunk in the morning,” she says, tipping her chin up, “Don’t you worry about me, Master Holmes. I can skip out of her reach quite easily.”

“Tell her I dropped my hat in the lane,” Sherlock says, dropping it carelessly into the dust. “And I sent you to fetch it. She may not argue with that.” He closes the door and steps farther inside, regarding John carefully.

“I saw you in the church.”

“It was St. Christopher,” John blurts, “He brought me here, I think. And Mrs. Hudson has gone. My Mrs. Hudson, I mean.”

“Where has she gone?”

“I don’t know, she’s just gone. She was right by me in the church and then- and now it’s- it’s all older.”

Martha opens her mouth, and Sherlock raises a hand before she can speak. She sits back on the wood, in silence.

“What do you mean?” Sherlock asks.

“Everything changed,” John says, helplessly. “I don’t know why. I haven’t got anywhere to go. You’re the only person I know here. Except Mrs. Hudson, but I don't think… I don’t know,” he finishes lamely.

Sherlock stands back, hands on his hips, regarding him carefully. “And to think you asked if I were mad,” he comments eventually. He steeples his hands briefly before his mouth, and seems to age in thought until he’s older even than Martha. “I propose we visit Mrs. Hudson. I have a theory.”

“How can we call on her? It is very late.”

“She will not be sleeping yet. I will run back and have little Baskerville fetch me my violin if I can. What could be more natural at Christmas than carol singing?”

So saying, he departs the shed, giving them instructions to go round about the pond and follow the rough path past the Lestrade farm. John looks back to see him darting back towards the school.

“Baskerville,” he repeats, remembering the name. “Henry Baskerville?”

“Yes,” she says, surprised. “You know us well!”

“There were only five or six boys in the church.”

“The rest are gone home for the season,” she explains. “There are five boys who have no place to go and so must stay.”

“Five? No, that’s not right…”

“Oh, I am forgetting Master Whitney. He is due to return from London today but the snow has made his progress very slow.”

“Don’t they have any family?”

“Family, yes, but distant.” She puffs up the crest of land behind the Lestrade farm, breathing clouds. “Masters Armitage, Baskerville, Holmes, Moriarty and Moran. And Whitney!”

John stumbles to a halt. “And it’s Christmas Eve,” he says, in the shadow of the holly again.

“Christmas Day; it has passed midnight.”

It’s Christmas Day, John thinks with horror, and that snaggle-toothed row of gravestones is waiting to gobble those six lives up by twelfth night. And what of Martha, he wonders. What happens to her? Had her little grave been set aside someplace else?

“Martha, have you heard of something called diphtheria?”

“No, what is that?”

“It’s an illness. It… it’s very serious. I don’t know much about it, but you can die from it.”

Her face crinkles up with old woe. “Why do you speak of it?”

“I heard… It might be coming here. Oh my God, Martha! Maybe that’s why I’m here. To stop it!”

“But what is it?”

“A disease, Martha. It kills.”

“As typhus?” her voice is small. “Scarletina?”

“Yes,” John says firmly. “We need to warn them.”

“Typhus took my brothers,” she says, pale, “All of them- Look! There’s Master Holmes now, you must tell him what you have told me.”

Sherlock bounds up through the snow, the ends of his scarf flapping. He has the violin bound up not in a case but a cloth. He bounds right passed them, beckoning them onwards, and they have to scurry to keep up.

“You must listen to what Mr. Watson has to tell you.”

John repeats his concern, and Sherlock’s frown deepens considerably. “Witney’s coach arrived from London not an hour since and they are gathering. I was lucky to find Baskerville alone.”

“That must be where it comes from,” John says, seeing the whole tragedy unfurling before his eyes. “London. I bet it comes from London. We should go back and warn them!”

Sherlock hesitates, and then doggedly continues up the path. “I do not think the danger is so great. Baskerville advised me that they are all in high spirits tonight, Whitney no less than…the rest. Now let us go quickly, or we will not find Mrs. Hudson still awake.”

He will not discuss it any further, setting such a brutal pace through the snow that they struggle to keep up with him. By the time they arrive, Martha is shivering, and John’s feet are wet through. And he still doesn’t know what theory Sherlock wants to test either.

The house is not the little cottage he expected, but a sizeable stone building, not dissimilar in style to the school.

“What song?” Martha pants between chattering teeth, “Something old?”

“Something cheery, I say,” Sherlock replies, tucking the violin under his jaw and briskly trilling across the bows. “The Wassail.”

The music he drags from the cold violin is nothing short of remarkable, and John finds himself elbowed in the ribs by Martha before he realises he is supposed to be singing as well. It has not occurred to any of them that he wouldn’t know the tune. Fortunately, the tune is laughably simple and he mouths along until he starts to get the hang of it.

_“Wassail! Wassail! All over the town,_   
_Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown,_   
_Our bowl it is made of the white maple tree,_   
_With a wassailing bowl, we drink to thee!”_

Martha claps her freezing hands, and her voice rises sweetly, and better yet, loudly over John’s bungling. Sherlock joins them on the verse, in a rich voice that makes John forget himself completely for a moment.

_“And here’s to the horse and to her left ear,_   
_May God send our master a happy new year,_   
_And a happy new year, as may we all see,_   
_With a wassailing bowl, we’ll drink to thee!_

_Now here’s to the maid in the lily-white smock_   
_Who trips to the door and pulls back the lock_   
_Who trips to the door and pulls out the pin_   
_For to let us jolly Wassailers in!”_

As if summoned, the door opens and a doughy woman beams at them beckoning them in. She claps as Martha skips in ahead, followed by Sherlock with a bow and twiddle of the violin. John hurries in after, nodding and trying to keep at the back of the group.

Inside it is dim with candlelight and green all about with boughs. The woman ushers them into the living room where the violin’s tune seems to fill up all the space. An old woman, bound to her chair and wrapped well in blankets grins with toothless delight and wags a finger as they swing their way through the end of the song.

_“Now here is to the butler who brings us the beer,_   
_May God send this worthy a blessed year,_   
_But if he should bring us a bowl of the small,_   
_Then down shall go butler, bowl and all!_

_Wassail! Wassail! All over the town,_   
_Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown,_   
_Our bowl it is made of the white maple tree,_   
_With a wassailing bowl, we drink to thee!_   
_With a wassailing bowl, we drink to thee!”_

“Well played, well played fiddler,” the old woman claps and croaks. “Well sung, maid! Fair efforts, clown! Rachel, fetch drink.”

She has glittering eyes in her sunken face, but she must be short sighted because she squints terribly, beckoning them close. John creeps up on Sherlock’s heels but when he can see under the cap properly, it is not his Mrs. Hudson. He knew it would not be.

He looks at Sherlock and shakes his head. The other seems satisfied but they are not yet done.

“To your good health,” he says, bowing and raising the warm cup of ale the woman has bought. They share it around, though John doesn’t much like it and Sherlock only takes sips, and then the old woman demands an encore. “I shall play,” Sherlock promises, “but we must get back. May we see St. Christopher before we go?”

“Yes, yes, Rachel can show you. Play a song!”

Sherlock takes them through a blistering rendition of a song that John does know; the Holly and the Ivy, which leaves them all breathless at the end of it and the old woman well satisfied. The younger woman then shows them through to a dining hall, where at the end of it on a wooden stand, is the head of St. Christopher.

It is chilly in the dining room, and whilst Rachel is happy enough to light a candle for them to admire St. Christopher by, she soon finds an excuse to return to the warmer part of the house.

“Now,” says Sherlock, and to John he sounds strangely bright. He sets down his violin on the table. “Here he is.”

“Why are we here?” Martha asks. “I do wish you would tell us why we are doing this.”

“I am about to,” Sherlock answers. “Watson?”

John starts at his name. “John,” he corrects. “You can both call me John. I wish you would actually. Watson sounds weird.”

“John,” Sherlock repeats, and he smiles that shy smile again ever so slightly. Martha stares, and awkwardly, Sherlock hurries on. “You said St. Christopher brought you.”

“Yes, in the church. Well, the statue with the baby Jesus on it.”

“I have noticed that when I climb over the plinth, there is a subtle change, which I had attributed to other causes. The lights of the windows are brighter; the trees seem different,” Sherlock explains. “And lately the visits from my ghost are more frequent. And now you have appeared.”

“I’m not the ghost,” John argues. “I’ve heard him too. It’s something old, I’m sure. Something from this time.”

“He appears every year, at Christmas,” Sherlock says. “And no-one else can sense him, but I.”

“Then how could that be me?” John says, “I’ve only been here a few days. Hardly a week!”

“But you look like him,” Sherlock says, and there’s a touch of longing in his voice. He grasps John’s shoulder, searching his face for any kind of recognition. “The very same. You must be my ghost.”

John has a memory of being smaller and lonelier, when his night-time companion was not just a plastic action man but very nearly a person to him; the doll a kind of avatar for the spirit of the desperate wish and that the man himself was real, and just beyond the window, keeping him safe. John had used to whisper into the buttons of a pillow, a secret radio to a friend all of his very own.

“I didn’t see you.”

“Martha doesn’t hear her lady, and she has never seen you either. And I have never seen her lady. There must be some more personal connection.”

“How long have you been seeing me?”

“Since I began at the school,” Sherlock says. “I was younger. You were older, but you… I was frightened to see you at the window; I never saw you when I was outside of the school before then, except when...”

“When you were in the garden,” John remembers. He has disordered memories of the night in the shed, but Sherlock had acted strangely when they parted, and if Sherlock had been unsure if John were real or not, then that went some way to making sense of it.

“I did not think it was real,” Sherlock says, “Not until you were still there in the morning. I have also invented you many times with the yen.”

“You… see me when you smoke,” John says, suddenly putting two and two together. “You can’t do that! That stuff is dangerous; it’s going to; where do you even get it?”

“London,” Sherlock says, unabashed. “Whitney brings it, and I steal it.”

“Well you have to stop!” John says hotly. “No more. Martha, you-“ he turns to look at the girl and then everything goes slow and syrupy and he can hardly seem to move.

While they’d been talking, Martha had been looking at the head of St. Christopher. A benign face, full-bearded, the eyes cast down tenderly to the baby that he carries more than a mile away in the little chapel. He was fatherly to her, but in the kindness of his smile, she felt the swell of loss and it made sharp the lack of warmth in her own life.

Looking back, she’d watched as Sherlock had taken John’s shoulder and the look on his face had told her something else she had long known. They were not equal. Servant and master, boy and girl. And here was John, sweet and lamb-like, exotic, ready to take her place as Sherlock’s confidant. He would not cast her aside to be cruel, it is just nature taking its course.

‘I wish I could speak to my happy Lady,’ Martha thinks. ‘I want to be as she is.’ Needing to, she stretches out a hand and touches the chin of St. Christopher. The eyes of the marble are blank and white, but warm. They fill her vision, looking down at her upturned face. My child.

John opens his mouth to call her, but his words don’t come out and even if they would, he doesn’t think Martha would hear him. He sees her sway, slowly, terribly slowly as if she is about to fall, but she doesn’t because she’s not really swaying at all. She’s fading.

“M-” Sherlock says, his hand heavy on John’s shoulder. He moves as if through concrete, just millimetres, and Martha looks back, from very far away, her eyes wide.

And then she’s gone.

_____  
_____

**Part X**

The return of reality was like a slap to the face. John shudders out a breath, backing away from the statue, grasping the other boy’s sleeve.

“She’s gone,” John croaks, “She’s disappeared.”

“Martha,” Sherlock says, wide-eyed. He steps forward towards St. Christopher and John roughly pulls him back, hissing, “Don’t touch it! You’ll vanish too! Was this your theory?”

“I-”

“Let’s get out of here.”

They hurry through a muddled goodbye and flee out into the winter’s night again. Where could she have gone, John wonders, and hopes desperately that she is ok.

“Sherlock, I think it’s time, getting all messed up. It must be that. I think I’ve slipped back in time and maybe Martha’s gone forward. Whatever it is, that statue is what’s causing it,” John says, absolutely certain of the matter. “Every time I’ve seen you, you’ve been going over the base, or standing on it at least, and then the baby Jesus in the church and now his head. Sherlock, are you even bloody listening to me?”

“Yes.” Sherlock looks awful. His expression has drawn inwards, guilty and worried and John regrets shouting at him at once. He takes a deep breath to calm down and think.

“It’s ok,” he says, patting Sherlock’s shoulder. “We’ll figure this out.”

“What is oak-hay?”

“I mean,” John stifles a laugh, despite the situation. “If Martha’s in my time, we don’t need to worry too much. I bet the first thing she’ll do is head back towards the school and if she does, then my Mrs. Hudson will look after her.”

“Let us hope she is only inconvenienced,” Sherlock agrees, and sighs heavily, rubbing at the back of his head. “We will find her again, and bring her back. All must be well.” He still sounds worried.

“So what do we do now?” John asks. “I haven’t got anywhere to go.” He supposes he’ll have to go back to the shed and wait out the night at the very least, and then what? How long does he have here, or is he stuck here forever? This second question is an uncomfortable one and John hastily turns his thoughts to the more immediate situation. “Are you going back to the school?”

Sherlock doesn’t quite answer. It is now very late, and he moves slowly down the path at the side of the Lestrade farm, “Beware not disturb the dogs,” he says, and the conversation ceases for the time being. John follows, still chewing over his thoughts on the statue.

Once they are safely on the edge of the pond, John says, “It must definitely go both ways; the time travel, but only in certain situations. I’ve crossed the stone in the garden and not come here, and you must have been to the church before and not gone anywhere. It can’t just be any time someone touches part of it, or you’d have half the congregation pinging off across time every Sunday. Have you ever crossed the stone and not come into my time?”

“Yes,” Sherlock seems surprised by the question. “Many times. Nothing is different when I cross it in summer, or in daylight. Nor if the weather is warm or fine. Crossing the stone only has any effect in the coldest time in the few days before Christmas, and never after twelfth night.”

“And you said you only see the ghost that looks like me at Christmas.”

“Yes.”

“What does he do?” John asks. They are near the shed now and he perches on the threshold, beckoning for Sherlock to do the same.

“Often very little,” Sherlock says, sitting heavily. “Sometimes I wake in the night and Baskerville is not in his bed, and instead the other boy is there.” He looks at John and his eyes say ‘you’. “Merely sleeping. Other times I see him at my window looking out.”

John considers and then very carefully he asks, “Which is your room?”

Sherlock tells him. John nods slowly. “Right,” he says. “That’s what I thought. I think I heard you. I was painting.”

“I remember this. A year ago. Legare,” Sherlock breathes. “You were tying up an object in paper. You had no voice, but you showed me a little… object and you said ‘legare’.”

“Legare?” John echoes, and then he realises what Sherlock misunderstood. “No, Ferrari.”

“Ferrari,” Sherlock repeats, wonderstruck. “What does it mean?”

John laughs, tired and confused and ready to find something, anything, funny. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he laughs harder, leaning on the door of the shed until Sherlock starts to find it funny as well. “It’s just the name of the car- it’s Italian!”

“I thought you were trying to tell me you were tying things- legare from lego. To tie.”

“Lego!?” John bursts out. “You don’t have Lego here?”

“It is Latin.”

“Latin! I don’t speak Latin!”

Sherlock waits for John to stop giggling and then says, quietly, “Then you really are my ghost.”

“You’re mine. We’re each others,” John corrects. “I heard you play the violin.”

“That was long ago,” Sherlock remembers, with sudden happiness. “I had just begun my time here. You told me I played well.”  
“And on the lawn, in the snow,” John says, sobering. “They had you down by the pond.”

Sherlock does not answer.

“Didn’t they? A group of boys. They had snowballs. And,” John makes another horrible guess that’s suddenly obvious. “They put stones in them. They bully you here.”

Sherlock swallows. John watches him and recognises that there isn’t a single time that Sherlock is remembering. On the night in the shed, he’d told John he was different. John knows how that can be.

“Yes. I hate it here.” He’s embarrassed at his own admission and at his weakness, because now it is obvious who John has heard crying. He shivers.

“Lets go in the shed,” John suggests. “It’s cold out here.”

Sherlock agrees readily enough and they huddle inside against the door. John expects Sherlock to relight the tin pot but he hasn’t bought an ember from the school house to light it with, and John learns that matches haven’t been invented yet. It’s very disappointing.

Still, it’s warmer inside than out and they can sit on something other than snow. They sit shoulder to shoulder, heel to heel, pulling their jackets around their bodies as tightly as they can.

“Tell me about how you came here,” John says, breathing clouds into the air of the shed. Sherlock curls his knees up and John nudges him gently with his elbow. When Sherlock doesn’t speak, rubbing his hands with cold, John peels off one of his gloves.

The striped wool stretches as he pulls it over Sherlock’s hand, and John stacks their palms between them, gloved, bare, bare, gloved. “Tell me about you,” he says again. “Please.”

So Sherlock does.

____

He was born in a house by the sea, a beautiful place and a place that he loved. He had grown up the much younger son of a magistrate who preoccupied his time with his work and left his sons to his own devices.

The older boy had thus been as much a father and a keeper to him as he had a brother, in a way that had built to a natural reliance and over-affection. The inevitable separation had at first just wounded deeply, but over time the hero-worship of early childhood had soured to resentment when Sherlock had found himself for the second time overlooked by the prospect of a career elsewhere.

Left with nothing but a private tutor who Sherlock could run rings around and a petticoat government within the household, Sherlock had found solace and freedom in the expanses of his father’s lands.

These wild places had become his love and companion, from the billowing cliff-tops to the tree-lined valleys he had cast aside almost all of civility and run wild.

Locked doors would not contain him, and boots were left to wither into hard worthless leather from lack of use. He would ride out, fearless of the dark and heedless of the sacristy of Sundays. He read, with no thought for moral or education but simply because he had gained the object to read. He slipped in like a fish amongst the rude folk of the coast; the ‘land sailors’ and beggars, the gallows-bound and his social inferiors; the estate tenants and their daughters in ramshackle cottages. And one above all, a son.

A friend.

A boy, who could whistle through his teeth and bring a seagull to earth with the single flight of a stone from a sling; a boy who showed Sherlock how to scale the cliffs and risk his neck lifting the speckled eggs from nests.

They had ridden the pony together, hands clinging into one fist within the red mane. They had caused mischief together, a sworn band of two, lain in the sun, worshiped the giddy sense of kinship.

Until the mischief was not just mischief, but the ruin of a reputation not his own and like the fall of the lead weights of the net break the calm surface of the sea, Sherlock’s father’s hand had descended on them both.

And then it was over.

No more chances.

Not for Sherlock and not for his friend. No goodbyes. The whip had fallen, the banishment sentenced. The coach had come that afternoon, and Sherlock had not been home since.

He had tried. In the first year, he had run, and not made it. The return had been colder and crueller. The letter from home had told him what he had both expected and feared; even if he ran again, if he made it home, there would be no-one waiting for him.

Victor would be gone, vanquished. No more.

That night when he’d cried, a ghost had come, and comforted him. An unfathomable ghost, with unheard of speech and fantastic clothes. A ghost who spoke Latin and brought kindness to a lonely child. And he’d clung to it.

The school was a business; the work insipid and the rules harsh. Summer passed and autumn came; his second year, and with it a new student who like Sherlock possessed a streak of wildness. And a maid.

She was one of the many swept around by the epidemics that year; a wet year. Regrettably educated beyond her status and then brought low by her family’s fortune, Martha suffered in the adjustment to her new life as much as Sherlock had.

Gossip in the halls; she saw things, dreamt nonsense, the cook had beaten her hard this time for her lies. She was in the scullery, watering turnips with her tears when they’d first spoken. “You are the maid who saw the ghost,” he’d said, and then earned her friendship forever by adding. “I believe you.”

So now, despite the futility of the arrangement, he had an ally. Martha dealt him considerations outside of his ghosts, and her Lady came more frequently than his boy, and the sharing of the story was a comfort to them both.

Then came the tragedy of a swim in the pond during the summer of his second year. Sherlock tells John about the hand, waving above the surface as the boy sank, jerking like a fish. He describes the masters shouting, the boys milling in confusion. All but one; the Irish boy, who had met Sherlock’s eye across the chaos and, smiling, walked back to school as if nothing more had perished than a mayfly.

Then a week before the incident, there had been an exchange of harsh words between the swimmer and the boy, and in the days before, a school walk. They’d seen mushrooms.

The boy had been pulled from the pond, sick and already drowned. Only Sherlock had seen enough and thought to ask why.

And since that day, he’d had an enemy.

____

John has not interrupted during the greatest part of Sherlock’s talk, though he has had questions. Now, he tugs Sherlock’s hands to get his attention and asks something he has wondered for a while now.

“Sherlock, when we went to that house tonight, did you really have a theory?” John asks, scrutinising him. “Or did you just want to get away from them?”

Sherlock’s eyes dart from side to side. “They do anything he tells them to do. I am clever, so he will not kill me, yet…”

“Who is he?”

Sherlock’s voice drops to a whisper as he says the name.

“Moriarty.”

John can almost hear that lilting, heartless voice again. Let’s play a game.

It was a voice with a total lack of compassion and a mean sense of fun. John has seen cats play with mice; he’s met troubled children and bullies of the worst kind, but there had been something more in that one sentence than just trouble and anger. Bullies, John knows, have reasons. Sometimes they don’t know what the reason is, but there always is one. But this boy?

No one had even loved him enough to put more than a date on his gravestone. John had felt sorry for him, but now he knows why.

“He tortures you.”

Let’s play a game.

The memory of the voice, the evident fear that Sherlock is trying to hide when he jerks a tiny nod, makes John furious. He has the impulse to grab Sherlock by the hand and march into the school, find this boy and break his nose. Do something. Stop him. Protect his friend. And then with a shock, he remembers that he doesn’t need to. “He’s going to die.”

“What do you say?”

“He’s going to die,” John repeats, “They’re all going to die. In a week. It’s the diphtheria- it kills them all. Baskerville, Whitney, Moriarty, all of them.” And then with terror, he looks at Sherlock. It’ll kill him too.

“We need to go,” John says, getting up on stiff legs. He’s woozy from tiredness; but he shakes his head until the feeling passes. “Sherlock, we need to go back to the church.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re leaving,” John says. “I’m going back to my time, and I’m taking you with me.”

“If you stay here,” John says, swallowing. “Come with me, until it’s safe.

Sherlock rises, staring at him.

“Do you want to stay here?” John asks, unsure of what the other boy is thinking.

He expects Sherlock to take his time about answering. It’s a big question and even as he’s asking it, John knows he wouldn’t give up his own time for anything, even though it’s hard, and even though it hasn’t treated him well. It’s his. It’s all he knows.

“No,” Sherlock says, firmly. “I’ll go with you. I have no regrets if I cannot return.”

“Are you sure?” John asks. He had not thought of forever.

At this, Sherlock laughs, a tiny tired laugh. “I have seen you,” he reminds John. “How you sleep, how you eat. The wonderful things you own without knowing how wonderful they are. I will go. I would have that life.” He shrugs and gestures to the sad dust of the shed. “This is all I have now- a woodshed and a violin. Even Martha is gone.”

John nods. “Then let’s go.”

____  
____

**Part XI**

The lane to the church is dark as sin. John treads behind Sherlock, who like Good King Wenceslas, plants steps in the disturbed snow that John follows in. The wind has risen, making a rush through the trees that makes the countryside around them sound like a great dark and unseen sea.

John shivers. He is not afraid, though his heart is pounding. Something cold kisses his cheek and he rubs at the numb flesh in surprise.

“It’s snowing,” he says.

Sherlock lifts a hand to the air and looks up. “Yes,” he agrees. “We should hurry. I think it will come quickly.”

He’s correct. The tiny spitty snow becomes a fall and then a flurry before they even reach the chapel. The chapel wall rises from the snow like a blank face, the windows squinting at them with mistrust.

The door is a black shape in the pale wall. John wonders how they’re supposed to break in – the vicar must have left hours ago. Sherlock crouches at the lock in the dark, wriggling something inside it. John stands, arms folded, holding Sherlock’s violin and watches the falling snow.

The haze of flakes plays tricks with his eyes. Shadows seem to move around the trees, flickering.

“I have it,” Sherlock says and the door opens with a soft scraping noise.

Inside the hollow space smells of green. The pine and the holly of the fragile decorations have filled the air with their fragrance, and that of the now cold candles. John stumbles against a pew, trying to feel his way.

“I can’t see.”

“I know where the statue is,” Sherlock says, groping back for John’s hand. Together they follow the line of the wall. “Here.”

Sherlock pulls John closer and they feel upwards onto cold stone of a different texture. “What must we do?”

“I don’t know,” John says, “Let’s just wish hard.” He closes his eyes and thinks of the house as he knows it, of Mrs. Hudson, of the fire and the kitchen and cycling down the lanes and the market and videogames and telephones.

But nothing happens.

“I don’t get it,” John says, dismayed. “I was just looking at it before. I didn’t do anything, it just-“

“What was that?”

John has heard it too. “Just the door?” he suggests. “Maybe the wind is pushing it.”

But Sherlock turns, face thrust into the darkness like a dog on a scent, alert and alarmed. “Someone’s here.”

No sooner has he spoken then something whips past John’s face and cracks into the wall. He jerks into Sherlock’s side, the violin slipping and twanging in his grasp. Someone chuckles.

“Here’s a fine trap for the little wren. Now how get him down?”

“With sticks and stones,” says another voice, and there’s another hard crack against the wall.

“Missed!” John says, furious.

“Moran and Armitage,” Sherlock whispers. He tugs on John’s elbow and leads him down the wall towards the alter, keeping low. The door creaks. The chapel is dead end, but the darkness is a blessing in disguise. They can’t see their way, but the others can’t see them either.

John’s heart yammers in his throat. Next to him, Sherlock is trembling with adrenaline.

They’ve done this before, John thinks. They hunted him over the lawn in the snow and beat him down with snowballs cored with ice and pebbles.

“Moriarty wants you,” Moran says. He has a low voice. “Come out.”

‘No chance,’ John thinks and nudges Sherlock on. If only they could somehow get around them. He can hear them slowly prowling around the door. He feels in his pockets and brightens. “Can we rush them?” he whispers into Sherlock’s ear. Sherlock stiffens.

“Armitage,” he whispers back. They freeze; the chapel is so quiet, even whispering can faintly be heard. Armitage flings another stone in their general direction. It clamours against something metal – a candlestick? – and then rattles away across the floor.

Slowly, hoping his silhouette won’t be seen, John rises. He listens hard. It’s difficult not to be able to see; if he could, he knows he wouldn’t get it wrong. Next to him, Sherlock guesses what he is doing and holds his breath.

Now John can hear them, the soft slide of leather soles across the stone floor and breathing. One by the pews, the other must be further back. Step by step, he creeps into the aisle, Sherlock low at his heels, and then John gently tosses the cola cube over his shoulder to the back corner.

It clicks as it lands and as Moran pushes towards it, John flies forward. He can see the slip of white where the door is open and against it the faint form of what must be Armitage, head swivelling disoriented. In a split second Moran realises the trick and bellows.

John drops his shoulder, hitting the shape of the other boy solidly, knocking him down. He slams his heels into the floor and lets Sherlock blow past him to the door. Before Sherlock has even realised his plan, John pivots and sinks his weight into his knees. Armitage groans, rolling on the floor.

Moran’s footsteps pound down the aisle, only a few steps in all. John can see his shadow; the bull neck, the shocking size of him, but low as he is, Moran can’t see John against the wriggling form of Moran and the blackness of the door. He runs into John’s fist with a yell.

“John!” Sherlock cries.

Moran does not go down. John instinctively raises his hand to fend of the retaliating blow and there’s a sickening crunch of wood and a scream from the strings of the violin. He’d forgotten he’d been holding it. A sharp pain in his arm makes him drop it at once, shying away into Sherlock’s reach. He pulls John through the gap in the door, as Moran, off-balance treads on Armitage and stumbles.

“Door!” John yells. He grabs the iron ring set in the wood and slams it shut the scant body-width they’ve escaped through. On the other side, Moran roars and thunders into the wood.

“Lock it!” John pulls back with all his strength on the ring, foot planted on the stonework. The door shudders.

Sherlock wastes no time dropping to one knee and fumbling desperately with the lock. It seems like an age before it clicks. John falls away from the door into the snow, pulling Sherlock by the collar. His arm is stinging where the violin broke against it.

They stumble away from the chapel, panting. John grasps his forearm and it feels strange. He slips his fingers down the sleeve and finds the cut.

“Sherlock,” he says, horrified. “He had a knife.”

Sherlock does not seem as surprised. He pushes John’s sleeve down. It’s only a scrape, and it’s so cold that it’s already bleeding sluggishly. John presses his sleeve into it. “Oh God, I’m so sorry. Your violin.”

“It stopped the blade,” Sherlock says, cutting him off. “And your murder. I would lose a hundred violins for such a cause.”

“Can they get out?”

“They could break a window. Moran sets no more store in the sanctity of church than I do, but where I keep my peace, he would destroy it. We must move.”

“Where to?” John asks, eager to be away from Moran. “It didn’t work,” he adds, heartbroken. “I was thinking really hard about my time, I swear, but nothing happened.”

“Perhaps it can only take you,” Sherlock says. John rounds on him at once.

“No, that’s rubbish. You’ve been to my time. It’s just not that bit. Maybe we need the stone in the garden. From the inside to the pond- maybe it works best for you there, in that direction. We might as well try it.”

“Very well,” Sherlock says, sounding tired. “Then we try it.”  
___

They stand together on the block looking out, but feel nothing but the cold. John drops back and forth from one side to the other, hoping, but his efforts are fruitless.

“Stop,” Sherlock says in the end.

“You try it; just you,” John says, leaning on his knees. His feet are frozen and the adrenaline is wearing off, leaving him nothing but tired. “Maybe this one doesn’t work for me.”

“Have you ever passed it into my time?”

“No,” John shakes his head. “I climbed over it a few times, but nothing ever happened.”

“Then we have our answer.” Sherlock sits down heavily. “We cannot travel together.”

“I can’t travel at all!” John snaps back. “I got here by the church and now how am I supposed to get back? Anyway, I don’t believe it; I’ve heard you inside the house. Inside! There’s got to be another way.”

“What way?” Sherlock argues, “We have exhausted our resources. The head, the body, the base. There is no more.”

“But there’s got to be,” John says, straightening. “I’m not giving up. We didn’t properly try the head. Maybe we should go back.”

“And be arrested for thieves?”

“Coward,” John says, at the end of his patience. “You’re scared of Moriarty. You’re letting him win!”

“I-” Sherlock has gone pink with outrage, but he has no argument.

“What’s the matter with you? Where are your theories now? What’s got you so frightened of him?”

“You have no idea what he’s like. Moran is a hunter, he takes pleasure in seeing creatures suffer, but Moriarty is a murderer.”

“Poison,” John says, folding his arms. “How’s he going to poison us, then?”

Sherlock has no immediate answer for this.

“See, he can’t do anything.”

“Moran can.”

He has a point there. John shifts uncomfortably. “Then let’s go while we’ve got a head start. There must be something in the school that links our two times. There must be. We just have to find it.”

“The disease,”

“It’s not going to whack us off immediately. As long as we can get back to my time, we’ll be fine. They can cure it, Sherlock. In my time…we’ll just get some medicine. Besides, I might actually be immune. It’s just you I worry about.”

Sherlock considers this, hunched like a crow on the block.

“Come on,” John says, “It’s cold. Let’s go inside.”

Slowly, Sherlock holds out a hand.  
____

The house is terribly quiet. They enter through the back door into the deserted kitchen. All the servants, Sherlock says, will have left to spend Christmas in the village. None are expected to return until morning and then only to cook for the teachers. Meals will be cold for the boys.

“What about dinner?” John asks. “Don’t you have a turkey or anything?”

Sherlock shakes his head, bemused. “Beef,” he says, “If anything. They usually make some small effort, to avoid complaints, but you forget, we’re the sons of poorer men, and boys already discarded from other institutions. Rich food isn’t good for our temperaments. Now lower your voice, I do not know where the masters are.”

John snorts. As they enter the upstairs hall, John supposes rich decoration can’t be good either, because there is none. Compared to the church, it’s a dismal sight.

“It’s like a prison,” John comments, looking about. “It’s awful.”

Sherlock shrugs, immured to it. John is about to suggest searching his room, when a tiny noise makes them turn defensively. The frightened face of the boy retreats back behind the door that he has opened to peek through.

“Baskerville! Why are you in the masters’ study?” Sherlock says, putting a hand on John’s fist to lower it. “Baskerville, open the door at once.”

Baskerville is speaking into the crack in the door, his voice little more than a whisper when he replies. “Holmes, I dare not.”

“Where is Moriarty?”

Reluctantly the door opens a fraction more. “He is looking for you.”

“Then he hasn’t found us,” John says, stepping around Sherlock and putting his hand on the door. He leans his weight on it, and Baskerville squeaks, leaning back to hold the door shut. His heels scrape on the floor as without too much effort, they push him back.

“No!” he protests, scuttling back out of their reach. “No, you must not!”

John steps through into a parlour or lounge of some sort, the fire roaring in the grate and otherwise beautifully arranged for the season, in stark contrast to anywhere else in the great house. There are all the trimmings for a party, including four adult guests, but none of them moves or speaks.

“What did you do?” John asks, afraid to step further.

“There is a drug in the wine,” Baskerville whispers, shrinking back. “I have been set here to watch them. They only sleep.” As if to prove it, he patters over and lays his hand close to the mouth of one of the men. “They are otherwise well and breathing. You may feel it for yourselves.”

John approaches one of them; a scrawny man who has spilled wine across his leg, or perhaps dropped the cup when the drug took effect. “Are these your teachers?”

Sherlock drops the spoon back into the punch bowl with a clatter. “They are our keepers,” he says.

Someone laughs hoarsely.

The second boy is so tucked into the corner of the settle that John hadn’t seen him at first. He pushes a leg out of the wrap of blankets he is in and regards them with an intense, glittering expression.

“Holmes.”

“Whitney.”

“Don’t get too close,” John whispers, plucking at Sherlock’s sleeve. “He’s ill.”

“Water, Baskerville,” Whitney croaks. The younger boy hurries to fetch him a drink, which Whitney grasps for. He is already sweating. The wind buffets against the window.

“Rest, rest now,” Baskerville urges, pushing Whitney back into the settle. “You will over-exert yourself before the doctor can see you.” Croaking, Whitney sinks back into the cushions.

Baskerville is wringing his hands when he turns back. “Moran will fetch the doctor in the morning,” he says. It’s clear to John that not even Baskerville believes this.

Sherlock shakes his head. “So,” he says, but nothing more.

“Baskerville,” John says, “Henry, isn’t it?”

The other boy is frightened, keeping the armchair between them. His eyes widen. There are dark smears under his eyes as if he hasn’t been sleeping. “Why’s Moriarty doing all this?” John gestures to the teachers, “What does he want?”

Baskerville shudders. Whitney croaks another laugh. “Nothing.”

“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

“Moriarty is the piper. All he wants is to pipe us all to hell.”

“So why help him?”

Baskerville cringes against the back of the armchair. “He controls the hound,” he says, his voice strange. Sherlock’s fingers dig into John’s elbow. “The beast; it’s coming for me. He keeps it away.”

John gapes at Sherlock, who minutely shakes his head. ‘He’s barking,’ John thinks. Whitneys eyes are white all around as he coughs. Baskerville whimpers. ‘They’ve all gone mad.’

Out loud, John says, “How does he do it, Baskerville. Henry, isn’t it? Why don’t you let us help you?”

“There’s a stone,” Baskerville says, eyes like lake water lifting to meet John’s. “A piece of marble.”

“Where does he keep it?”

“I cannot tell you,” Baskerville croons, and then laughs, half sobs. “I shall not tell you! No, it’s eyes…Whitney, I can see its eyes!”

“Go,” Sherlock says, urging John from the room. They hurry backwards, closing the door as Baskerville’s thin voice rises to a wail over and over.

“Moriarty! Moriarty! They are here! Take it back!”

They flee down the hall and up the stairs, ducking into the first empty room to catch their breath. Shocked, John throws his hands in the air. “What was that?”

“Baskerville is ill,” Sherlock says, lips tight and face miserable. “He suffers delusions, fits. I know not what else. Moriarty preys upon this weakness, and uses the fear of this hound, Baskerville’s nightmare, to use him as his spy.”

“But he’s not a bad person!” John explodes, “Couldn’t you help him?”

“I have tried. John believe me, I have tried to disabuse him, but there is nothing I could do. There is no hound. Moriarty has no dog I can pull into the light of day and show him it is all in his head and a single word of rebuke would free him of Moriarty’s grasp. And that would kill him, John. Moriarty has no use for him otherwise.” He lowers his voice. “I thought it would be kinder to keep him safe though afraid, than at peace but dead.”

“This is insane! And Whitney?” It is bearing down hard on John that there is little they can do for the two other boys.

“Whitney’s father is embroiled in a dishonourable affair, and his enemies seek him in his hiding place. Whitney let slip enough for Moriarty to guess where that was, and now he holds that over Whitney. A letter and his family is destroyed. And then he pays him, for the drugs, for the information from London. Whitney has no wish to say no to him.”

“And Moran’s just a nasty piece of work.”

“He is,” Sherlock agrees, “And Armitage loves a girl from the village, but his father would disown him if he knew. Moriarty encourages the dalliances.”

“Which is his room?”

Sherlock does not need to be told who John means. “This one,” he says and shows him to a door.

They stand, listening, but downstairs Baskerville has gone silent and they can hear nothing. “I have never been inside,” Sherlock says. “Take all caution.” His eyes are dark and serious as he says this. “One of the maids was found to be steaming open the letters. She fell.”

“Fell where.”

“Down the stairs. An accident,” Sherlock says darkly. “And by pure coincidence, Baskerville was seen in the village buying snare wire.”

“Right.”

Sherlock tests the handle of the door and to their surprise, it turns smoothly. The door opens silently on its hinges, to reveal…

A room.

John leans on the doorframe to peer over Sherlock’s shoulder. It’s just a room with two bunks and two desks, the same as the others. Sherlock frowns and sidles carefully inside.

One of the bunks must be Moran’s, John thinks. There are a number of little gouges in the bedpost, as if someone has spent hours planting the tip of a knife there. A pair of riding boots, their tops sagging and their heels ornamented with hard looking spurs are the only other clue. The room is neat; almost anonymously neat on the other side.

“There’s nothing here,” John says. He steps over to the desk and puts his hand on the drawer.

“Careful!”

“Why? What’s wrong with it?” John pulls his hand back like it’d been burnt. Sherlock stoops and subjects the drawer to a thorough examination and then says, “Nothing,” in tones of disappointment.

Sighing, John pulls it open.

“The stone,” he says, lifting it out. It’s a square piece of white marble, rough around the edges as if it had been chiselled off of something. “The legs,” Sherlock says, suddenly.

“What legs?”

“The head is at Mrs. Hudson’s home, the body in the church, the base in the gardens. Where are the legs?”

“Here?” John says. “Put away somewhere? Broken up?”

“The attic,” Sherlock says, grabbing his shoulders. “It’s just above my room- and yours!”

“It’s power must be bleeding down, that’s why I could hear you, but I couldn’t see you! How do we get up there.”

“There’s a door; it’s simple!” Sherlock darts out into the hall. The door is right at the end, set at an angle. John dimly recalls it from his own time; he’d assumed it was just a cupboard and had never bothered to explore it.

“Can you pick the lock?” John asks.

The sound of someone tutting makes them both startle. They both pivot, John thrusting the lump of marble into his pocket like a guilty secret.

He’s standing in the corridor, thumbs looped insouciantly into the fine leather of his belt, head cocked to one side. He is pale, dark-haired and fine-boned. Much like Sherlock, John thinks, and then looks at the youth’s eyes and thinks no.

“James Moriarty,” the boy says, and there’s a brogue in his voice that almost makes it sound friendly if it weren’t for the complete lack of warmth in the eyes.

“Sherlock, won’t you introduce me to your unusual, little friend?”  
____  
____

**Part XII**

‘He’s little,’ John thinks with surprise.

It’s true. Moriarty is neither a tall boy nor a heavily built one. John had been half expecting another Moran. John isn’t tall either, but if it came down to it, John reckons he’s got more muscle than Moriarty, and he knows he’s good at holding his feet in a shoving match.

But there’s something strange about him. He has the same eerie intensity in his eyes that Baskerville had with the difference being that Moriarty seems to be in full control of whatever it is that simmers in his mind.

“Very unusual,” Moriarty repeats. “I had not calculated on you finding a pet, Holmes. Does he perform tricks.”

“One or two,” John says shortly. “Come closer and I’ll show you.”

Moriarty clicks his tongue and chuckles, shaking his head. “Manners, manners. Why is it they always think that brute force is the answer? Hmm?” he arches an eyebrow at Sherlock. “Master Powers found a hard lesson there. Were you paying attention? You see,” he speaks to John again. “The inferior mind just cannot seem to grasp what it is I am capable of. I am not taken seriously, but Holmes is clever. He has… a scope of imagination that is most useful.”

“What do you want?” John demands, “Because I’m not in the mood to stand around listening to you yak all day.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Moriarty says and then with a weird and delicate motion rolls his head back over his shoulder and bellows. “Moran!”

Immediately, there is a horrible, high, yelping scream from downstairs. John’s blood runs cold.

“When I was a boy,” Moriarty says brightly, “Nanny believed in not sparing the rod. ‘I chastise thee not’-“ he breaks off just long enough to stamping his heel on the floor and another sob echoes through the house. “’-out of hatred! But!’” A stamp. A cry. “’-out of love!’ She was a very loving woman. Twas sad,” he says, without a trace of emotion. “Very sad indeed, how she went in the end. Paralysis. Old ladies are very unsteady on their feet, you are aware. It was all very slow.”

‘He’s horrible,’ John thinks. He is no longer considering how to fight him, just how to get away. He has no idea what Sherlock is thinking.

“The king,” Moriarty claps his hands, like it’s a fine joke, “would have a whipping boy! What do you think, Holmes? I have nominated Baskerville for you; doesn’t he yell!” He stamps harder, gleefully on the floorboards, like he’s playing in puddles.

The whites of Sherlock’s eyes are showing, his teeth are bared. Downstairs, Baskerville is howling. John can’t stand it.

“I shall kill him,” Moriarity says, “If you refuse me what I want.”

“What do you want?” John shouts, furious. “Why are you doing this?”

“Why? Why?” Moriarty laughs, tipping his head back and positively gurgling with delight. “Do you know,” he says, clasping his own face and gasping with mirth. “I have no idea! It’s all just so dull!”

“Go-“ Sherlock says abruptly. John doesn’t need telling twice. Head down, he runs, shoving hard past Moriarty who twists and claws at Sherlock’s back as he passes. Sherlock writhes, drops out of his coat and in just his shirt, flees.

With longer legs he darts ahead of John, catching his wrist and dragging him aside at the landing. He pushes at a door, which doesn’t exist in John’s time and takes him stumbling down a set of stairs.

They come out in a cramped space and then the kitchen. John can hear footsteps behind them. “He’s coming, go!” There are clattering footsteps overhead as well, at least two people, and with no other choice, Sherlock drags open the door to the yard and they rush back into the cold.

They run out past the empty spaces, down to the pond, and then pause in the shelter of the trees to listen. The snow has slowed to a trickle of flakes, and the sky is starting to be light enough for them to see the shapes of the trees.

“We must leave,” Sherlock says, already shivering. “To the village and take a horse, I am finished with this place. I am – I can do no more.”

“But what about-“

“He is lost!” Sherlock says wildly. “If I stay, he tortures him, if I go, who knows? Henry is that monster’s creature now; I cannot save them! But I can save you, John. We can leave.”

John falters. Sherlock grasps his shoulders. “Come with me.”

‘I’ll never get back to my time,’ John thinks, frightened into silence. ‘And Moriarty won’t stop. We’ll run and run and he’ll come after us just for the fun of it until he gets us or we go mad too.’

By the school there are sounds of the hunt commencing. John hears a door slam and someone calling.

“No,” he blurts. “No, I’m not running away.”

“John, please!”

“No! Listen. He’s-“ John pauses with sudden realisation. “He’s a big faker. No, Listen!”

Distantly by the lawn, there are voices. They can’t make out the words, just the cadence of their tone, some lower, one higher.

“That’s Henry’s voice,” Sherlock says.

“See, he’s fine. It was all fake. Moriarty’s just playing with us. You’ve been stuck in that place so long, he’s made you think he’s more than he is but he’s not,” John says firmly. He holds up his hand, fingers spread. “Whitney’s sick.” He tucks in his thumb and then lowers his fingers one by one as he speaks. “Baskerville’s a shrimp, Moriarty’s got nothing but a lot of talk. How many’s that?”

“Two; Moran and Armitage.”

“Right. And Armitage wasn’t that keen to get his hands dirty at the church, was he?” John says. “So it’s two against one. We take out Moran and Moriarty’s got nothing but a big mouth. And I’m going to punch him in it. Come on.”

“John,” Sherlock says in faint amazement, and then he rallies. John squints across the lawn.

“We should split up,” John says. “Circle around the pond and get their attention. I’ll sneak up and whack Moran from behind.”

“Can you do that?”

“Sure,” John says, with a certainty he doesn’t feel. He stoops and feels in the snow for a branch or something and then touches his pocket. “Sure,” he repeats, believing it this time. “I’ve got this.” He holds up the lump of marble.

Sherlock nods slowly and then clasps his hand. “Good luck, John. I hope to see you on the other side,” he says, tense and formal, and then he lets go and slips away, his white shirt and black trousers as good as camouflage. John can only make out his shape for a minute or two before he vanishes into the landscape.

He crouches by the tree, listening.

None of the boys in the grounds have lamps. He can see them pacing about, Aware that their footprints will lead the gang right to him, John picks his way slowly under the trees, keeping to the shadows, until he is away from the line they travelled down to the pond.

Across the way he hears a shout, and then the noise of the gang rounding on it.

‘Hit Moran hard and fast,’ John thinks, planning, ‘Deck Armitage if he gets within reach.’

He doesn’t expect Baskerville to try anything at all, though he’s prepared to kick him if he does. The only thing that nags at him is Moriarty. Would he fight, or not?

Even as he’s thinking this, he sees a solitary shape slinking along the edge of the pond.

It’s him.

He’s not been fooled by Sherlock’s distraction; he’s suspicious and approaches the trees. Something about his posture, the sidling gait, makes John think of hyenas.

He tightens his grip on the rock, and emerges. At once, Moriarty stiffens.

“I know you are hiding here. Come out,” he says. “Boys and girls, come out to play.” He circles in on John’s hiding place, giving John the uncomfortable feeling that Moriarty is literally sniffing him out.

John steps out onto the ice, the only space he has to keep the distance between them. Against the white he stands out.

“There you are,” Moriarty says. “Such a troublesome rascal. I ask myself where you come from…and every answer is impossible.”

“It’s not,” John says flatly. The marble rasps against his fingers. “And you know where I come from. It pisses you off, doesn’t it? That it won’t work for you.”

Moriarty steps onto the ice, his pinched face tight with anger.

“Been trying, have you?” John says, pretending to swagger. He digs for the most aggravating, the most hurtful things he can think of. “Well, St Christopher won’t take you. He doesn’t want you. You’re broken. You are cruel,” John says, the marble burning cold against his palm, and the words are not his own suddenly. “Your wishes are untenable.”

“Lying!”

“I’ll tell you,” John says, feeling dazed. “Tell you what, I’ll tell you how to do it. The secret.”

Moriarty takes another step onto the ice, John retreats.

“Lies!” Moriarty says again, but he is interested. His curiosity draws him further from the shore, as John backs away, until they are a length apart in the middle of the pond and John is strangely calm. He no longer grips the rock, it is just part of his hand. Easy. Right.

“Let’s play a game. Right here on the ice. If you win, I’ll tell you everything. How about it?”

Moriarty chuckles and straightens, relaxing. The idea pleases him. It moves it all back into his own territory.

“I accept.”

“Not much of a match without an audience,” John observes. “Call them over?”

The corner of Moriarty’s mouth twitches. He is looking for the double cross but can’t find one or else doesn’t care because he purses his lips and whistles piercingly. At the far end of the pond, the other boys leave off hunting for Sherlock and appearing in a mob on the shoreline.

“Observe!” Moriarty calls. He acts insouciance, hands in his pockets, all schoolboy mockery. “My most worthy opponent!”

Moriarty tilts on his heels and laughs his humourless braying laugh again. His gaze glitters across the ice at John. “So, what will we play? Hmm?”

John lifts his eyes to meet Moriarty’s. “Catch.”

John whips back his arm out of his pocket and throws the marble as hard as he can at Moriarty’s feet.

With his hands in his pockets, the other boy has no time to thrust his hands out to catch the rock. It pounds into the ice with a sound like a gunshot, kicking up a spray of snow as it ricochets away. John doesn’t stop to see what happens; turning on his heel and racing for the bank. He doesn’t need to look. He can hear it.

The ice breaks, snapping out like whip-cracks – one, two, a third and then a fourth in quick succession- and Moriarty’s tiny cry of surprise in the middle of all this noise and the slop of water.

And then silence. His foot thudding into the earth, John jumps from the groaning pond and Sherlock is there, hand grasping his elbow and pulling him well away into safety. They look back.

On the other side of the pond, the boys are leaning forward, mouths open, Moran with his hands thrown up to his temples. But nobody steps out to help. There’s nothing to help, not even a hole in the ice. All that is left is a trembling patch of white, and the quiet.  
____

____

The sky is showing light on the horizon as they stagger inside. The school is eerily quiet. They pause to light a lamp from the dying fire in the hearth, the Masters still strewn around like the dead. Sherlock treads carelessly over them as if they were nothing more than furniture. He does not stop to spit or pass any last words over them. John follows him, picking his way more circumspectly.

Sherlock leads him past the empty bedrooms to the door that leads to the attic. He drops to his knee and fiddles with the lock until it pops open.

“Up here,” he says, and they climb up into the dust.

There are no windows. The room itself is a hollow space that seems to swallow up all the noise. The floor by the door as far as they can see is trammelled with marks of the servant’s access that go no further than the stack of six cases.

“Is there anything you want to take with you?” John says. “There’s time. We could go to your room and get it.”

“My violin is already smashed,” Sherlock says, “There is nothing else. Come, let us search.”

They step past the boxes into a thicker layer of neglect, the lamp throwing its glow ahead of them, feebly against the gloom. Something squeaks and runs out of their way, skittering across the boards.

“Rats,” says Sherlock, his voice muffled by the atmosphere.

They move further back across the great space; it must cover the whole of the house, feeling their way past a stack of stiff fabric, and other items that form the midden pile of thrift and good intentions now long forgotten. John knocks dust from wooden items he cannot identify, and furniture that had gone wormy with age even before it was dumped up here.

“Box,” Sherlock says, breaking the silence. He chokes on the air and passes John the lamp as he clears a broken picture frame, rattling in its canvas wrap, from on top of a crate.

It is the only thing of its kind in the attic. John watches, dry mouthed as Sherlock hunts out a rusting candlestick from the mess to work on the box. “Here,” John says. He digs his fingers in under the planking and pulls. The tacks that formed the box are still relatively new and squeal as together they pull them out of their moorings.

One plank clatters to the floor and then a second. The lamplight reflects something pale inside, just a fragment of white between folds of damp cloth and coarse rope.

“This is it!”

Setting the lamp on the floor out of harm’s way, they tug with renewed energy until they have created a hole in the crate wide enough for them both to squat and reach into the box, tearing the linen coverings aside.

Marble.

John can’t tell which bit they’re looking at but it’s marble all right. Smooth and off-white like icing on an old piece of Christmas cake.

He pushes a hand in and touches the cold ripple of stone. “Put your hand on it,” he says, and then, in case the magic favours him more than Sherlock, he grasps the other boy around the shoulders as well. “Hold on. So we don’t get separated.”

Sherlock mirrors his position, right hand pushed in next to John’s, his arm looping his neck. His fingers against John’s are as cold and pale as the marble, but even to John’s numb hand it is so obviously a living touch compared to dead stone.

“Send us back,” John says, and closes his eyes, in case that’s a pre-requisite of the wishing. He presses his fingers hard against the knee of St. Christopher and repeats the wish in his head over and over.

But nothing happens.

John opens his eyes. Next to him, Sherlock is trembling, his hand pushed further inside the box, as if he can grasp what he is longing for there.

And nothing happens.

John’s calves are aching. His knee slips to the boards with a thud. “Open the box more.”

Splinters bite into his hand as he busts more planks free. The cloth slips aside baring a greater piece of the statue. They plant their hands on it again, John’s palms slipping with anxious sweat.

And nothing happens.

“Come on,” he cries in frustration. “You’re supposed to be the traveller’s saint. Why won’t you help us? Please!”

“John,” Sherlock says quietly. His hands have gone limp on the stone. “It will not take me.”

“No!”

Sherlock shakes his head. “The sickness is coming, and I know what it is that you have not told me.” He laughs suddenly without humour. “No, you did tell me. When first we met, you told me you had read my name in the churchyard. John, you have seen my grave and know my fate.”

“No!” John says, his voice rising. “No, I don’t want you to die.”

“What if time is inexorable?” Sherlock asks. “What makes me more necessary than poor Baskerville, or Whitney? Indeed, I have a brother, who is successful and loved by my father. In the scheme of this life, I am not needed or wanted.”

“Who cares about this life?” John cries. “What about my life?” He lets go of the statue to grab Sherlock’s coat front. “You’re not giving up now, I won’t let you!”

“Leave me!” Sherlock argues, trying to wring John’s hands free. “The statue will only work so much for you; my pride made me think it had chosen me too, but it was only ever bringing me to you.”

“Why?” John demands. “Why bother, if all I get to do is leave you behind? What’s the bloody point of giving me a friend if I have to do that?”

“You consider me a friend?”

“Yes,” John stares back, “Yes, of course.” Then determined, he grabs Sherlock’s hand and forces his own into it. “I’m making a pact,” he says, “That’s a promise you can never, ever break. Not even if you die, not even if you go to a different time, not even if you grow up.” He tightens his grasp and raises their hand to a fist at the level of their chins.

“I vow to always be your friend, Sherlock Holmes, forever and ever, amen. Now you.”

Sherlock raises his gaze from their hands to John’s eyes, which meet his with fervour. Slowly he returns John’s grip. Neither boy blinks; lost in this moment, “I swear it,” Sherlock says, “For all time, I shall be John Watson’s most earnest ally.”

He sees the light leap in John’s eyes, the affection and joy that makes them both forget where they are and the exhaustion in their bones.

And then they are both plunged into darkness.  
____

Sherlock has almost a painful hold on his hand. John wriggles his fingers slightly and the other loosens his grip but does not let go.

“Did the lamp go out?” John asks, disoriented.

“There is no draught,” Sherlock says uncertainly. They feel for it, but to their shock, there is absolutely nothing around them except bare boards.

“Where…where are we?” Sherlock asks after a moment. “Is this your world?”

“I don’t know.” They creep around on their knees, awkwardly hanging on to each other so as not to get lost.

“The smell is different,” Sherlock adds, after another moment. “I cannot smell any lamp oil.”

John turns his head towards his voice. “Hold on,” he says, “There’s light from somewhere. I can kind of see you.”

It’s true. There’s a faint haze through the gloom; just enough for him to make out the general shape of Sherlock’s face, which is no small achievement given how filthy it is.

“Up there,” Sherlock says. John can’t see where he’s pointing but Sherlock drags him up onto creaking legs. “Here, there is a window!”

They feel around it, finding wood where there should have been nothing but tile. “A skylight! That wasn’t here before; we’ve gone-“ John breaks off with the effort of hauling at the planks. No 18th century nails hold these; they’re hammered in with steel, and it’s only chance that lands John’s thumb on a loose knot in the wood. Together they pop it out of its hole and a feeble light caresses their faces.

Sherlock peeks through and then John. The knothole provides a narrow view of a grey dawn horizon, the sky spotted with the last few stars, and there, the crumpled shadows the outbuildings. John steps back and turns blinking at the gloom.

“Look. Look!” He darts forward, thrusting his hands into a box the tiny beam of light has fallen on like a signpost. “We’re back! This is my time, Sherlock!” he lifts the tangle of old electric cords out of the cardboard box and holds them aloft, laughing. “Look, it’s got Woolworths written on the side! We’re back! Crumbs, and it’s Christmas”

The door to the attic in this time is locked as well, and although Sherlock tinkers with it with his lock picks John finds it more efficient to simply hammer on the door and bellow as loudly as he can.

A commotion downstairs snowballs into a furore, and then comes the sound of feet on the stairs. Sherlock hangs back from the door. The handle rattles. “In here,” John yells. “We’re locked in.”

“John, is that you?” Mrs. Hudson calls.

“Yes, it’s me! Let us out!”

“Just hold on!” a stranger’s voice says. There’s a muffled discourse behind the door, and then John hears Mrs. Hudson says, tearfully. “No, I haven’t got a clue where the key is!”

“Alright, just everyone stand well back,” the stranger’s voice says and then with a colossal thump and a snap of breaking wood, the door bursts open around the lock, spitting splinters.

“John!”

A man pushes the door back into the attic, throwing real light into the space and making them both squint. Seeing the blurred shape of Mrs. Hudson, John flys forward, dusty from head to foot like a wraith to meet her.

“Oh, John!” she cries, catching him headlong in her arms. “What on earth were you doing up here? How did you get locked in?”

The man, who John recognises as Mr. Lestrade, peers into the gloom of the attic. “Hello, one more up here, Mrs.”

John disentangles himself from Mrs. Hudson’s grasp, “Mrs. Hudson, this is my friend. Come out, don’t be shy. ”

Sherlock has sunk back into the shadows, looking suddenly timid. John puts a hand out. “Come on,” he says, smiling. “Come on, it’s just Martha’s Lady. Come and meet her.”

Sherlock steps forward, looking uncertainly out from under his curls, until he’s almost at the door. Mrs. Hudson stares at him, eyes widening.

“No,” Sherlock says for her, voice breaking. “It’s not the Lady. It is Martha.”

“Sherlock Holmes,” she says, and then his hands are in both of hers, and to John’s surprise he has his head bowed over her fingers, nearly weeping.

“I never thought it would take you away; I thought we would all go together. I just wanted to know.”

“Oh, you silly boy,” Mrs. Hudson says, and she lets go of John to cuddle him as if he were a much younger child. “I’m fine! I’ve had a lovely life here. I’ve done so many things.”

“Shall I ring the Neighbourhood Watch?” Mr. Lestrade asks. John had almost forgotten he was there.

“Goodness, yes. Call off the search,” Mrs. Hudson pinches John’s ear. “I thought you’d been snatched from outside of the church! We’ve had the whole place in an uproar looking for you.”

“I didn’t mean to-” John protests, and then he sees that she has no real anger about it, just relief. Sherlock is wiping his face, and trying to look sensible again and just making his face exceedingly dirty.

“Come,” Mrs. Hudson says gently. “My daft boys. Let’s come out of all this dust and cold.”

Downstairs, once scrubbed clean, Sherlock sits in the corner of the sofa in some ill-fitting clothes of the Lestrades’, and stares about him, taking it all in. He is dazed at the wonders of modern times

“So what happened?” John bursts out, as soon as Mr. Lestrade has gone. “The last we saw, you were in front of St. Christopher’s head and then you faded away and that was it.”

“Well, I didn’t go very far, actually. I was in the same room when I took my hand away, only of course, it was different. It seems silly to say, but I’d come quite a long way forward, to 1938.”

To John this sounds like as long ago and just as incomprehensible as 1790, but he sees Sherlock’s eyes flicker at the thought. “Over a hundred years,” Sherlock says faintly. “And now?”

“It’s much later than that now,” John says, faintly proud. “It’s modern times. 1989.”

“I’ve been here for more than fifty years,” Mrs. Hudson says, touching her face and chuckling at Sherlock’s expression. “If it wasn’t already obvious.”

“So what happened?” John repeats.

“I turned around and… it was the same house, just with different furniture. And there was Frank. Frank Hudson, of the very same family, all alone in that big old house, chilled to the bone and whooping with bronchitis.”

“You married him,” Sherlock says, figuring it out a step in front of John.

“Of course! That’s why there were two Mrs. Hudson’s. I forgot you’re married- I mean-“ John stumbles over the fact that Mr. Hudson is dead. Obviously the same Frank Hudson.

“Yes, I married Frank. Not right away, of course. But I stayed for a long time until he was better and by that time we’d become comfortable and then the war broke out. Frank couldn’t serve, you know; flat feet, poor Frank; so we just moved here and there together with the war effort. And with all of that, no one was too troubled by the fact that they didn’t know exactly where I was from and I didn’t have any papers. Lots of people were bombed out. And then after the war, Frank started trading in London for a long time, but in the end we moved to Florida, and stayed there. Well, Frank stayed there, what with-”

“What war?” Sherlock says, cutting through her talk. Mrs. Hudson gives a précis of the complex times for him.

“It was hard,” she agrees, at his horror. “But I wouldn’t change my lot, Master Holmes, so there’s no use you sitting there feeling guilty. As bad as it was, it was better for me than a life in service, drudging away until I married a farmer out of sheer lack of choice. No! I got to live through the 60’s – it was marvellous fun! All those parties.” She gives a wistful little sigh as if there had never been and would never be again a party like the 1960’s.

“And cinema,” she sighs, “And cars. Beautiful cars, and music! And progress! We drove for days just to be in Houston when they sent up the rocket, and watched the landing in a bar, and then celebrated all night long. Would I swap all of that to live in a time where they didn’t even have matches. Not a chance!”

“But why?” Sherlock asks, scrubbing his face with his hand. “Why 1938, why here. Why us?”

Mrs. Hudson settles back into her chair and hums thoughtfully. “I’ve never found out,” she confesses, “and I never tried to. But I’ve always felt that St. Christopher granted me a wish that day. I wanted to be as free and as happy and as colourful as my lady. And here I am.” She chuckles and then reaches across to pat Sherlock’s hand. “And I think you will be happier here too. Though it’s a pity we can’t just pretend you were bombed out as well, that’s going to be an awful snaggle of paperwork.”

“What will we do?” John wants to know. He is thinking of the end of his stay in just a week’s time. His heart sinks. After all, he knows what the system is like, and the arbitrary merry-go-round of placements. John can’t quite buy into Mrs. Hudson’s optimism. Sherlock could end up anywhere, especially when they realise how odd and old-fashioned he is. John’s afraid for him. There’s so much about 1989 he doesn’t know. Who’s going to help him?

“I’ll call some people in the morning,” Mrs. Hudson says, “Don’t worry. Frank and I moved in all kinds of circles and I’ve still got friends in London who might have an idea or two… though I can’t say it would really be their area of expertise. We’ll see what they say.”

“Stella and Ted might help,” John suggests, though there’s no knowing if there’s room at his house or not. He doesn’t know if that other new boy is still there. Probably. Stella and Ted aren’t the kind of people to kick even a bad kid out right before Christmas, not unless he did something like really awful, like set someone’s bed on fire or someth-

“It’s Christmas,” John says, suddenly.

Mrs. Hudson nods. “Yes, it is.”

“It’s Christmas Day.”

“Yes?”

“It’s Christmas morning, I mean. And- I’ve got presents! Oh! That’s right, wait here!” John leaps up, forgetting all about foster homes and paperwork, and tears up the stairs to his room. He pulls out the gifts from his wardrobe and brings them back downstairs, bearing them aloft in triumph.

“Happy Christmas, Mrs. Hudson!”

“John, you shouldn’t have!”

“Sorry, it’s not much. Open it.” He leans on the arm while she picks apart the wrapping paper and spills out the toy race-car and the painted statue into her lap.

“Lovely!” She picks up the statuette in both hands and admires it. “Saint Nicholas,” she says, smiling. “How appropriate!”

“His hand was lost,” John says apologetically. “So I made another one with clay, but it’s not very good.”

“It’s very nice.”

“Can we open some?” John says, fidgeting, and then he stops. “Oh, I suppose Sherlock doesn’t have any. That’s alright, I’ll share mine with-” he turns to speak to the other boy, but he’s not listening.

“He’s exhausted,” Mrs. Hudson says, putting down the gifts and getting up to cover Sherlock with a blanket. “Dropped right off, poor thing.”

“It was a long night,” John agrees. In sleep, Sherlock is small and very young. John turns the lamp off next to the sofa.

“I think you’d best get a little rest too, dear,” Mrs. Hudson says, pushing John’s hair out of his eyes. “For a few hours.”

“Alright.” Seeing Sherlock sleeping makes him aware of how completely drained he is as well. “I suppose.”

Mrs. Hudson giggles, and gathers up the paper, carefully folding it into a neat pile. “Up you go,” she says when John dithers.

“Is it really alright?” he asks.

Mrs. Hudson gives her one of her bird-like looks; the kind that makes him think she’s not such a daft old lady as she pretends to be by half, and she smiles.

“It’s a wonderful Christmas present,” she says, and just like John, she doesn’t really mean anything he found in the junk shop.  
_____  
_____

**Epilogue**

John clambers off the train, lugging his suitcase impatiently. “Come on,” he calls back. “I can see them!”

“Hold on,” Ted puffs, struggling with the second suitcase and limping. “We’re not all young gadabouts. There.” He heaves the suitcase onto the platform and follows John along the concrete, the boy practically about to explode.

“Coo-ee!” Mrs. Hudson waves from beyond the barrier, face pink with the cold. “John, look at the size of you!”

“Don’t say that,” John groans, barrelling through the ticket gate. “Why do grown-ups always say that? I can’t help growing. It’s alright, Ted, I’ve got it.”

“There you are then, lad.” Ted tips his hat and shakes hands with Mrs. Hudson over the barrier. “All yours, Mrs. Hudson. Anything you need, you just let us know.”

He grabs John’s shoulder and squeezes it. “And same goes for you, son.”

“Thanks,” John says. He’s been waiting for this all year, all summer, all autumn, and now it’s here, he has a lump in his throat.

“Don’t you worry, we’ll be down to visit London soon enough. We’ll pop by,” Mrs. Hudson says.

“Yeah,” John says, and shakes Ted’s hand. “Thanks.” He repeats. Ted rearranges his hat, swallowing hard. “You keep in touch now. Going to be very odd, not having you around the place. You’ll be missed.”

“You’ll miss your train,” John says, aching over saying goodbye but so eager for the life ahead.

“I’ll be off then,” Ted says, and then he can’t help himself, and pulls John into a bear hug. Feet almost dangling off the ground, John hugs him back.

“You’ll be happy enough here?” Ted asks, quietly into his ear. John nods. And Ted knows. He’s an old hand, and he knows that he and Stella are a port in a storm, a last stop for the desperate, but it’s high time for John to have something more.

“No doubt you will,” he agrees with a smile. “You be good, now.”

They wave him all the way, chuffing across the platforms to the opposite platform, just in time to make the train passing through back to the city. When it’s gone, John lowers his arm slowly. He and Mrs. Hudson are alone. He swallows the lump in his throat and then she says, “I didn’t change my mind yet.”

He laughs. “I’ll try not to give you any reasons to,” he jokes and then has to hastily swallow another lump when she lightly pinches his ear and says, “You couldn’t if you tried.”

They make two trips to lump John’s entire worldly possessions into the boot of Mrs. Hudson’s car, which sticks out in the car park like a shout; bright red and chrome.

She chuckles wickedly as she gets behind the wheel. “Had her warming up all morning just for you!”

John pats the dashboard and then, full of nervous energy, bursts out, “Where is he, then? What did you tell him?”

“Actually, it was easy. He doesn’t like going in the car much, anyway; carsick! But I think he was preparing a surprise for you at home.”

Home. There’s a word.

“Nothing like the surprise we’ve got for him,” John says over the roar of the engine, basking in the glow of the word ‘home’. Not a Home; just a home.

She chuckles again, and grasps his hand for a moment, a co-conspirator and glad to have him.

“Does he call you Martha? What should I call you now?” John wonders aloud.

“You can both keep calling me Mrs. Hudson. I’m very happy you’re officially my boys, but I’m too set in my ways to start being ‘Mummy’ now!”

John sinks back into the freezing leather of the seats and grins stupidly at the hedgerow as Mrs. Hudson gallantly refrains from racing down the icy lanes.

“I can’t wait. I can’t wait.” John breathes against the glass and then they can see the old school emerging between the trees, tall and sunshine yellow. When the car stops, John launches from the seat as though he’s spring-loaded. “Where is he? Can I go find him? Can we hide the suitcases later? I can put them in the stable if you distract him a bit. You don’t have to lift them, I promise, and I’ll unpack what I need before dinner, but can I?”

“Go!” she says, laughing. “Down by the pond!”

John runs. The gravel of the front drive crunches under his heels, and then he’s running on the grass, bent and crackling white with frost that still hasn’t melted. He pelts down the inky lines of the trees, running his hand through the branches of yew and throwing the bright red berries to the floor. Down the lawn, down to the figure that is straightening up at the edge of the pond, face lifted towards him.

John wants to yell with wordless emotion, but as he skids to a halt in front of Sherlock, he cannot. Panting, he smiles instead, and just holds his arms out slightly as if to say ‘here I am’.

“You look different.”

“So do you.”

“Ah. A new coat.” Sherlock fingers the collar self-consciously, and then smoothes it down, showing it off. John tries not to giggle. It’s a nice coat, but Sherlock insists on everything he wears being slightly formal and slightly old-fashioned. It makes him look a bit lumpy, truth be told.

“Look,” Sherlock says, after a moment.

They are stood at the very edge of the pond and he steps back, onto the ice, sliding. He’s wearing his skates and moves a pace or two beyond the bank. “It’s frozen.”

“All the way?”

“All the way,” Sherlock says, “Aren’t you coming?”

“I need to borrow some s-”

In answer, Sherlock simply opens the front of his coat, and then laughs, throwing his head back. “Skates?” he asks, lifting them from around his neck and smoothing the coat back down flat. Without shoes under it, it looks a lot neater.

“Are those Mike’s?” John takes them, but these are a bigger size, and new.

“They’re yours,” Sherlock says casually. “With the compliments of the season.”

He skates away then, a touch embarrassed and spends a moment showing off while John tugs the skates on. “You’ll have to wait for your present,” John teases, once he’s caught up. “You’re going to love it.”

“Will I?”

“Yes,” John says, gliding around him in a circle. “I’ve arranged with Mrs. Hudson that you can have it at dinner. But it’s a surprise.” Sherlock turns with him, and they pass a long moment doing just this, lazily turning around one another, drinking it all in.

The ice is blindingly clear under the great blue wash of sky, the clouds stretched out to mere scratches very high up. John breathes in, filling his lungs after the used air of the train, and then throws his arms out wide, “It really did freeze.”

“It really did,” Sherlock says, “and it’s Christmas, and here’s my ghost again.” His expression flickers a little, and John squirms around his secret. He doesn’t know what magic Mrs. Hudson has woven, but she was right. It had taken time, but someone on her strange vast network had come up with an idea or two, and Stella and Ted had been more than helpful.

In the year that has passed, John has seen Sherlock only a handful of times, always too short. They have exchanged letters by the dozen, however, and Sherlock has quickly become accustomed to the use of the telephone, though he doesn’t yet prefer it to the written word. He’s been shy, John has found, of talking about his difficulty with the modern world, although he’s been effuse about everything he’s learned.

It’s been hard, too, being back in Chelmsford waiting and waiting for all the proceedings to be finalised and the jealousy of knowing that Mrs. Hudson has been able to keep Sherlock as her foster child, but that the very act of her doing so had complicated things for him.

“I’m glad you can stay for a while this time,” Sherlock says, and right then John opens his mouth and almost spills it all about the suitcases and Ted and the station, but he stops.

It’s only knowing that he has not one, but two certificates wrapped up for Christmas that stops him from talking. It’s the thought of Sherlock’s face when he opens it and sees what they say.

John stops on his toes, catching Sherlock’s sleeves. He tugs gently, skating backwards and Sherlock follows him around the ice. “A magic ghost. If you wish really hard, something amazing will happen,” John promises.

“A wish?”

“Yes. Go on. Humour me. Make a wish.”

Sherlock looks at him, the same old bright eyes under his dark curls. “Then I wish to be able to skate with my friend.”

“Wish it.”

“I’m wishing.”

“Then it’s done.”

John changes from a pull to a push, thrusting forward with his heels. Sherlock turns in his grasp until they are their own two-man train, John propelling him around the pond, faster and faster, skating in the sunshine, until the cold is nothing but an afterthought and the trees ring round them with laughter.

____  
____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading- I hope you've enjoyed it and once again, Merry Christmas and have a lovely time. I'll be back shortly after Xmas with some much awaited updates on some of my other fics, so keep your eyes peeled!
> 
> \- Oda xx


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